Ships In The Night
by Varyn Westwood
Summary: Meredith had never been good with small talk, pretending, or carefully traipsing around elephants. Especially when said elephant was a patient, a girl who looked just like Addison Montgomery—the stunning, infuriatingly nice ex-Shepherd—minus the blazing red hair, plus, interestingly, the Sloan last name. Yes, Sloan. She was just mostly thankful the girl's last name isn't Shepherd.
1. Avoiding Elephants

There were two times that Addison was completely convinced that God, or whomever it is that controls the insanity that is life, has it in for her.

When Addison was eleven, Madam Madeline, her eighth private tutor in only three years ran away, after one of the maids found her under the Captain's desk. The Captain then hired another tutor, a young girl fresh out of college. This time, she had introduced herself as Just Jolene; "Let's not bother with that Ma'am, Madam or Miss crap," Jolene had said smirking, and the child with fiery red hair, the awkward one without many friends, had taken an instant liking to her and hoped that this time it would be different. But then of course, four months later, _like every time,_ somebody had caught her screwing the Captain and that was the first time Addison decided that God must hate her.

The second time happened years later, after getting over the fact that her father was and would always be an adulterous man-whore. It happened that fateful night, on the steps of number 740 Park Avenue, after Derek had caught her in their bed, with his best friend inside of her. After she had chased after Derek and after he had thrown her and some of her ridiculously expensive clothes out of the house and into the rain, Addison had leaned against the door and cursed life. She had found the irony beneath all the heartache; of all the other regular nights where Mark would be hanging around, watching movies with her, making her laugh, giving her massages, eating Derek's dinner… playing Derek's role as husband sans the sex, of course, Derek would choose to come home on the exact and only night that they chose to act upon months—no, years—of pent-up emotions. Of course he would. Because she was Addison and God—if He exists—was never on her side.

A few years later, and here she was in the emergency room of Seattle Grace Hospital, staring at a patient tag at two in the morning and she's feeling it again. Feeling the suspicion that divine powers are against her, and it felt like some fucked up déjà vu.

"18, Caucasian female…Car flipped over. Paramedics found her a few meters away from the scene. She must've broken the window and crawled out. The driver didn't make it," the medical assistant said, pursing his lips. It was a weekend, another weekend that he didn't get to spend with his girlfriend and their son. He had hoped to clock out early when paramedics came, wheeling _this_ wreck in. "The general surgeon on call's in another OR, so one of the nurses paged you." He stared at the unresponsive doctor, who doesn't even seem to be listening. No wonder her marriage fell apart_, _he thought, irritated. What a nasty thought. He pinned it on exhaustion and patiently waited.

At the same time, Addison's eyes absently scanned the nametag on his chest. If she was reading it, it would read that his name was Dave. But she wasn't. "This can't be happening," she muttered. She _wasn't _listening. She was vaguely aware that someone was speaking to her, yapping on about a broken car window, but more important things were on her mind. Crucial things, like how this patient, this girl, had gotten to Seattle and what kind of joke fate was playing on her…

"Dr. Montgomery?"

…Or things like the fact that she needs medical attention—now! Addison turned to the medical assistant, and then back to the patient who was bleeding onto the bedding, shards of glass embedded into the side of her face which was being obscured by her blood-covered hair. Blood pooled at her abdomen. The young girl suddenly opened her eyes and cried out in pain, her voice cracking.

Grey eyes. Tiny specks of blue. _She has his eyes._ The girl whimpered and Addison quickly detached herself, ignoring the lump in her throat, and reminded herself that she is a surgeon first, that her patient was dying and now was definitely not the time for a trip down the dreaded memory lane. "I need an OR!" Addison yelled, heading up to the surgical ward, Loboutin heels clicking. The medical assistant, who was in footwear better suited for running, rushed off ahead of her.

Later, on the surgical floor, a surgical resident stood in front of the OR board, scrawling in details of the surgery: _Sunday, 2:30 A.M., Leila Sloan, Trauma—Abdominal bleeding, lacerations, Dr. Montgomery, A._

* * *

By the time the other attendings had returned to the hospital, the nurses had already begun whispering. Someone had even took the liberty of snapping a photo of the OR board, Addison discovered, when she walked past a group of interns on the third floor. One of them, a mousy brunette, was reading from her smartphone, and the other three huddled around her. "Sloan!" She squeaked, in a rodent-like tone that matched her features, and her friends murmured excitedly.

Addison held her head high and kept walking, her face not showing the discomfort she felt. In her mind, she was already regulating her own breathing, trying to lull herself back into a state of calmness that now seemed alien to her.

As she reached the elevators, one of the doors opened. Out walked a nurse pushing an aging patient in her wheelchair. Addison slapped the 'Down' button, eager to get a shot or two of caffeine from the café downstairs, and glanced inside the lift, immediately wishing she hadn't. Mark Sloan grinned at her from inside the metal contraption, his eyes twinkling. Startled, Addison composed herself before flashing him a weak smile, her fingers toying with the edge of her coat.

The same doors were about to shut when a gruff voice declared that he wanted to get off, "Excuse me." He'd noticed how her smile didn't quite reach her eyes, her uneasiness… how she'd almost seemed _afraid_ of him. He had always noticed her. Since college, and all throughout med school, when she was off-limits, the forbidden fruit, the love of Derek's life. Hell, he'd noticed her even when _Derek_ stopped. His compulsive way of noticing her had probably gotten them all into this mess in the first place. But he had seen her first, had known her first—in his mind, if anything as free and enchanting and beautiful as she was belonged to anyone at all, she was his. Not Derek's. And things were going great. Ignoring the disgruntled faces of the elevator's occupants, he carefully edged his way out to be with her.

Addison sighed. She would know that voice anywhere. "Mark," she mumbled.

The man in question ran his fingers through his messy hair and moved to stand next to her. "Where you headed?" He looked down at his female counterpart.

"Café."

"So am I," he said, smiling. He needed coffee anyway. He made a mental note to make Karev do something else that was humiliating and non-medical later. Like pick up Addison's dry cleaning…

"Stop it!" She said, just as the right elevator sounded its arrival.

Confused, his brows furrowed. Mark gave her questioning look. The elevator doors pulled open and they both got inside.

"That shit-eating grin, Mark," She announced. "Wipe it off."

"Aw, come on Addie. Don't be such a party pooper, no pun intended. It's the last week until… you know," he wiggled his eyebrows at her suggestively. He was talking about the 60-day celibacy bullshit bet she'd talked him into participating. It was supposed to prove that _they _were worth waiting for, she had said. She could've said nothing and he would've still said yes. He doesn't know if it's a part of loving her, not being able to tell her no, but this one has definitely got him wrapped right around her empty ring finger.

She laughed, and sauntered out of the elevator. She _did _know. She wasn't faring as well as she thought, with the bet still on and sexy interns like Alex Karev strutting about in her presence.

Mark was right behind her. Checking out her behind.

In line, at the small coffee shop, he pressed up against her, his hand grabbing hers, whispering in her ears, "I was thinking we could leave early next week, go back to my hotel room, order some room service…"

His breath on her neck, his too-close proximity… Addison shivered. "Mark, we're at work," she protested.

The plastic surgeon, abiding to her wishes, stepped back. "Never stopped us before," he teased.

She pretended not to have heard him. "Two cappuccinos, one with an extra shot and the other one dry, please."

Mark reached for his wallet.

"You've been getting me coffee for days, Mark. This one's on me." She likes that he isn't the type to feel inferior when she offers to pay for him. Mark hadn't acted like he felt inadequate when he'd found out many years ago that she was a trust fund baby. Might be because he was one himself. Substitute love and presence for money, that's what some parents do.

They walked back to the elevators together, his arm on her lower back. Mark was telling her, in animated detail, about a phone call from Amelia last night. Derek's younger sister had apparently freaked out about the three of them all together in one hospital after what had happened. Addison smiled, laughed when appropriate, but her thoughts were on the car-accident patient from that morning. She refused to think of the girl as anything but a patient. Maybe if Addison just ignored her existence, the girl would eventually recover and disappear. No one had to know, especially not Mark.

* * *

Derek Shepherd stood in front of room 216, contemplating the name on the door. The handsome doctor had had a fairly good morning and had welcomed this new trauma patient's file with a smile. He never had a chance to actually look at the patient's name, up until that moment. It's not exactly an uncommon last name, the girl's, but the way the entire hospital had been talking about her ever since he set foot into Seattle Grace that morning, how one of the nurse had scandalously exclaimed to the receptionist that she looked "exactly like The Ex-Wife" and had "The Best Friend's hair and eyes…and last name!" made Derek uncertain and anxious to see her for himself.

He pushed the door open and stepped into the room. Meredith, Yang and Karev were waiting for him, engaging the patient with awkward small talk, all of them, he could tell, were trying hard not to stare.

Meredith looked at her boss and boyfriend with wide eyes, thankful for his arrival. She had never been good with small talk, pretending, or carefully traipsing around elephants. Especially when said elephant was a patient, a girl who looked just like Addison Montgomery—the stunning, infuriatingly nice ex-Shepard—minus the blazing red hair, plus the Sloan last name. Yes, Sloan. Like Cristina had said earlier, this had potential to become _very_ interesting. But Meredith's just mostly thankful the girl's surname wasn't Shepard.

Derek did not gape. He did not stare, and he did not curse or yell for Addison, even though he very much wanted to. Betraying none of his feelings, he spoke. "Good morning, I see you've met some of my interns. My name is Dr. Sheherd and I'll be doing your neurological examination today."

"Her name is Leila Sloan," Meredith told him, frowning. How could he be so indifferent? Did he not see what everyone else in this goddamn hospital saw?

Leila Sierra Sloan stared at the blonde doctor, whose name she did not remember. The doctor seemed tense, displeased, for some reason, which Leila found odd since Dr. Shepherd had just said that he would be performing a simple check-up. Simple was a good thing. Maybe she hasn't been properly laid, Leila thought, the corners of her mouth twitching into a smile. In her mind, she can be just as crude as she wants to be.

_Gold star for Grey. _Derek bit back the urge to reply and simply disregarded her comment. "Dr. Yang, does the patient exhibit any symptoms of traumatic brain injury?"

"The patient, 18, suffers from slight headaches and spatial disorientation after her car accident, nothing that seems permanent so far. CT scans show some internal bleeding caused by the head trauma, but it should be absorbed and gone in a few hours."

"Okay then, let's begin."


	2. Throwing Parties In Hell

Thank you for all (6) of the kind comments, it really means a lot to me-you guys have no idea how much. I didn't think anyone would read this. I hope you like this one. xx -varyn

* * *

"She's not my patient, Derek, I don't have to see her." Two months ago, Addison would have given anything—even her limited addition aged 2.55 Reissue Chanel—for Derek to be chasing her down the hospital hallway like he was at the moment. A part of her actually wanted to keep on walking, to draw it out a little, because it was comical, really; the have-it-all neurosurgeon, Mr. McDreamy, teenage intern's wet dream, running after the hated, adulterous ex-wife he divorced. Two doors away from her _real_ patient's room, she stopped.

"You operated on her!" the teenage intern's wet dream protested. Derek knew it wasn't his place, not anymore, but he was married to the woman for eleven years for Christ's sake and he deserved something more than a patient chart and hospital gossip. And that was going to start by getting Addison to room 215.

Addison pursed her lips. Leaning against a door, she looked into the small window. Miranda was inside with her interns, doing rounds as usual. Rounds that Addison was supposed to be doing herself. "I filled in for a surgeon who was preoccupied with another surgery. The patient is not an infant, nor is she pregnant with severe complications—"

"The only complication is that she is the spitting image of you! You, Addison! And guess what her last name is," Derek mocked. He saw how she avoided his eyes. "Or maybe you don't have to guess. _Because you already know," _he said, the last sentence slow and accusing.

She willed herself to look at him, her hands still clutching her patient's file. Bad decision, she thought, when his eyes, those soft and kind eyes she fell in love a long time ago, now void of any affection, narrowed. He had no right to make her feel this small, and it angered her. Addison stood up straighter. "Don't you dare corner me, Derek—You have no right to demand anything from me, not anymore. If she's fine, send her home. I have real patients to see." She turned her back on her ex-husband and walked away.

"I'll tell him," he called after her. He knew it was an empty threat. Even if things weren't still sort of strained between the two of them, what would he even say? 'Hey Mark, buddy, someone whom I think might be your and Addison's lovechild is in this hospital. I don't know exactly how or when she was conceived, you sick son of a bitch, but you might want to check her out,' isn't quite the smoothest line he's ever thought off.

* * *

Something was off with the nurses today, Mark thought, coming out of the OR prep room. Any other day, they would be chatty, smiling and making eyes at him but today it was like they were entirely indifferent to his presence; his ruggedly handsome, manly presence very much worthy of attention. He had sensed it right before meeting with his first patient.

Mark had had a delightful morning up until the point where he had greeted the head nurse on that floor and she pretended not to have heard him, which was just blatantly rude, considering that the hallway had been abnormally silent. That was another thing he had notice. All the chattering had seemed to cease, almost instantly, when he had appeared.

Mark shook his head, then made way to the doctor's lounge. He spotted Meredith Grey standing alone, glaring daggers at a patient's file. "Hey, that file stole your boyfriend or something?" He said cheerily.

"Doctor… Sloan," she quickly shut the folder and held it against her chest. "Whatever it is, I can't handle it right now, sorry."

Mark watched her scurry away. He just wanted someone to talk to. He continued walking, intent on having a conversation unrelated to breast augmentation or rhinoplasty, until he spotted a familiar, curly haired Asian. "Hey, Yang!"

Cristina swiftly shut the door behind her and moved in front of it, purposely positioning herself in front of the nameplate. No way in hell was she going to be the one that let McSteamy know about his apparent McDaughter and endure the wrath of Addison Montgomery. She looked at him, her poker face on, "I'm not your intern, and I've had enough of you for one day."

Bewildered, Mark kept moving. Enough of _him? _What does that even mean? Colossal Bitch Syndrome, evidently, is contagious and the interns have contracted it as well. "Fantastic," he muttered. He didn't even know what he did wrong. As far he knew, he didn't do anything to deserve this kind of treatment. He didn't kill anyone's family member, nor did he sexually harass any staff in the past month. When he reached the attendings' lounge, he was glad to discover it was empty. Seattle sucks, he resolved, sinking into a chair.

* * *

"Code blue, code blue! Second floor, room two-sixteen! Somebody page Dr. Bailey, this patient is going into shock!" Olivia yelled. The nurse was panicking. The patient was just fine this morning… _Please don't die on my watch,_ Olivia prayed, hitting the alarm.

* * *

Miranda Bailey was in line at the hospital cafeteria's check-out station, when her pager rang. Planting her tray full of sandwiches and snacks on the counter, she looked menacingly at everyone around her. "If this is gone by the time I get back," she threatens the cashier, before running off.

* * *

Cristina was already there by the time Dr. Bailey arrived. "She has extremely low blood pressure, pale skin. The nurse said she was complaining of light-headedness and had trouble breathing earlier," she reported. "Then she went into respiratory distress. I had to intubate her." The patient was stabilized for the time being.

"Good work, Dr. Yang."

"There's blood in her urine," Olivia said suddenly.

"What?"

"She's peeing out blood."

"Yang, run a CBC. If she's anemic from the surgery, we need a blood transfusion," Bailey ordered. "What's her blood type?"

The sound of the heart monitor was shortly interrupted by the sound of rustling paper. "O-negative," Crristina replied, her heart—yes, regardless of rumors and what anyone else might say, she has a heart—sinking. "That's seven percent of the population."

"I am aware of that, Dr. Yang." Miranda Bailey turned to Olivia. "Page everyone in this hospital. We need a donor with O-negative blood." She thought of Mark. She thought of Addison. She wasn't completely oblivious to the rumors floating around. This girl, whoever she may be, hasn't got much time.

* * *

Mark had donated blood only thrice before in his life. Both had been on hospital grounds, during emergency cases. He knew it seemed selfish, considering that with his blood type, he was considered a rare universal donor, but he found the whole process a bit unsettling, and boring, just sitting there while some trained medic drained bags of your blood. That, and the fact that he'd never found time to do so. Good work consumes time, after all. Now, he was lying on a phlebotomy chair in an exam room while an intern, fully equipped with a butterfly needle, tube and donation bag, literally sucked the life out of him.

On a brighter note, the entrance was wide open, and from his chair, Mark could see clearly the greatness that was Nurse Faye's ass. She was definitely wearing a thong. He hoped it was lace. He likes lace. Addison has some great white lace matching underwear…

"Hey," A voice pulled him from his daydream.

Mark glanced upwards. Her auburn hair was twisted into a messy bun. He saw that there was a loose curl and he felt his heart smile. Burke, or any self-respecting cardiologist for that matter, would tell him it was impossible for the heart to smile, but his was definitely smiling at that moment when he looked at her. It had probably come loose, unnoticed by her, while she was completing her rounds. Her imperfections were perfect. Blue-green, _tired _eyes smiling down at him, she stood, blocking his view.

"Addison."

"I come bearing snacks," she said, holding up two small brown bags from the sorry excuse of a bakery downstairs and a small carton of pineapple juice.

He took one bag from her, careful to linger his hands on hers for a second too long. Addison has soft hands.

"Blueberry scones. They're not exactly Alice's Tea Cup but you like them," she said. Alice's Tea Cup's huge, delicious scones were one of the things she missed about New York.

"God, I love you so much," he said, taking one out of the bag while she moved to sit in a chair.

The intern drawing Mark's blood rolled his eyes.

"You mean, _Addison,_ I love you so much," Addison joked. "The comparison is flattering, however."

"Your self-confidence aside," he smiled. "How'd you find me here?"

"Well, I heard they're looking for type O-negative blood and the page said donations would be taking place in exam room five…" she faltered.

The intern placed an adhesive bandage over Dr. Sloan's puncture location, stored the donation bag in a cooler and left the room. He'd much rather be scrubbing in on a surgery than listen to two of his bosses flirting, and as soon as he gets this tested for all the sexually transmitted diseases that Sloan _must_ have, he might get to try his luck on a surgery with one of the attendings.

"Yeah, but how'd you know I'd be here?" Mark bit into a scone. It was a little dry, and a little too sweet, but it was the best thing he's tasted all day. "You don't know my blood type."

"I—"

"_Yeah, Addison,_ how _did _you know he'd be here?" Derek was standing at the doorway, a smug expression on his face.

"What are you, stalking me now?" The redhead glowered.

"Don't flatter yourself, Addie, I got the page as well," Derek scoffed. He continued nonchalantly, "I heard it was for the patient in room two-sixteen and came to see if anyone was a match. Rare blood type, you know."

_Oh, yes she knew. _Addison felt her face burn. "Okay," she said, and willed her voice to be as steady as possible. "Now you know. Your patient is safe. You can leave now," she declared. Addison gave her ex-husband a false smile, which Derek only smirked at.

"What do you say, Mark, d'you wanna meet this girl whom your blood will save?" Derek asked gleefully. He loved how Addison was now fidgeting with the corner of her white coat wordlessly. He could practically visualize her squirming inside at that exact moment, every fiber of her being bubbling with hatred for him. This was _really_ fun. "She's very pretty, _very much your type._ I could introduce you two."

"Derek!" Addison exclaimed.

At the same time, Mark, who was quietly watching two of his very old friends argue back and fourth, unaware of the hidden meaning behind the words exchanged, shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

"Mark!"

Derek sniggered.

Addison turned to him. "Derek, go away. Go save lives, go frolic around with your intern, feed your humongous ego, or whatever. Just leave."

"Fine." And with that, Derek Shepard stalked off.

Mark had no idea what just happened. Was Derek jealous? The thought was unsettling for him. That can't be it, he reasoned. He'd seen Derek having lunch with Meredith earlier and they had seemed perfectly happy. He decided to just keep eating his scone.

"Do you know what that was?" Addison asked him. Straight face, not a single one of her eyes twitched, she didn't even smile. The Captain would be so proud of her right now.

"No, do you?" Mark turned and swung his legs over to one side of the reclining chair. Making room for her, he patted the empty space next to him. "Come here, baby."

She obliged. "No, and I'd rather not find out," she said, leaning into his chest. He put his arms around her. Her heart ached; she hated lying to him. More than that, she hated that he was so trusting and willing to believe the things she says. Mostly, she just hated herself. Maybe the Captain can throw her a pity party when she joins him in hell.


	3. Mark's Whorish Genes

Thanks for the reviews. I've edited Derek _Shepherd _and _Cristina _Yang's names in the first two chapters, thanks, anonymous guest, for pointing that out. :) Hope you like this one._  
_

* * *

Addison had done this so many times before, that it's sad, really, how good she has become at denial. Denial is easy, simple, it feels so good, up until the second that your façade, along with whatever dignity you have left shatters into a million tiny pieces and the truth hits you in the face like a full and heavy water bottle.

She'd thrown a bottle of water at a girl once, in middle school, all the way from the back of her classroom to the front near the door. It had been a rare and uncharacteristic violent outburst that would've had caused her to get suspended, if her parents hadn't donated two hundred grand to the school and threatened the headmistress with a lawsuit afterwards. May Carter had been borderline obese, not too bright, and she was one of the tough girls that you don't pick fights with, especially if you were a scrawny, had bright red hair that stood out, and wore thick-rimmed glasses. Addison had stayed clear of her when one day, May had walked into homeroom class, shouted that Addison was a four-eyed, friendless nerd and that if Addison didn't do her math homework for her, she'd get her good. Addison had ignored the insult and the threat, but then the bully had begun to march towards her and that had scared her. So she'd grabbed what was nearest to her, which had been her water bottle, and hurled it at May. It'd hit the beached whale square in the forehead. She would've liked to think that she had good aim, but it wouldn't be fair considering the size of her target. "Okay, now that's just mean," she muttered under her breath.

It must have hurt though, Addison thought. It was one of the things she wasn't sure she regretted doing. However, she imagined that it might have felt like how _she_ had felt when she found Meredith Grey's black panties in her then-husband's pocket. Of course, Addison hadn't been _literally _struck in the face, but it sure had hurt physically. Before that, she'd spent years constructing her perfect marriage inside her head. She'd made excuses for Derek being absent, for her affair, for him running away across the country. She'd rejected the idea that her marriage had already fallen apart, that it was broken beyond repair. In her mind, they had been Derek and Addison, the happy couple in love all throughout medical school, and they would always be Derek and Addison.

If she was able to pretend, for years, that her marriage was perfect, _this_ she could easily ignore, Addison concluded. Nobody knew and nobody has to know. Leila Sloan was just another trauma patient who had nothing to do with Addison Montgomery, who would recover from her accident and leave the hospital to continue on with her happy life. Was her life happy? Addison wondered. What is she like? Is she stubborn like her parents and does she like beaches more than mountains? There was so much Addison wanted to know, so many things she longed to do to make up for lost time. Selfish though it might be, she just couldn't bear to tell Mark that she had rejected and abandoned not only one, but in fact, two, of his children. He would be devastated, she knew. He would feel betrayed, rightfully so, and if he were even remotely sane, he would want nothing to do with her afterwards.

But if you ignore something persistently enough, it doesn't exist, right?

"Hey, Doctor!"

Addison hadn't realized that she had been standing outside room 216 all along now for… ten minutes, she checked her watch. What was she even thinking, being around here? She exhaled.

"You're a doctor, right?" Leila called.

Addison looked around. When she didn't see anyone she recognized, she walked into the room and quickly shut the door.

"So…"

Addison shuffled into the room, finally standing awkwardly at the feet of the bed.

Leila raised her eyebrows.

"Yes, yes I am a doctor." Addison gathered herself together and brought her eyes upon Leila. Her heart leaped into her throat. The resemblance was startling. She felt like she was staring into a mirror, except her reflection had brown hair, a bandaged head and an insane amount of irritation on her face.

"Was it difficult?" Leila demanded, cocking her head to the side

"Excuse me?"

"My question. Was it difficult for you answer? Did you have to think about it long and hard?" Leila asked mockingly. She thought doctors were supposed to be fast and responsive. If she had been having a heart attack earlier, she was sure she'd be dead by the time this "doctor" got to her. "I could've died by the time you got here, you know."

"And yet you're still alive," Addison smirked. She crossed her arms over her chest. She was slightly taken aback; this wasn't at all like how she pictured their first conversation to be.

Leila tried to sit up straight, but it hurt, so she just threw herself backwards. Her voice softened when she spoke. "I wanted to know how long I have to stay here for."

"Well after surgeries like this, a fast recovery would normally be about a week's stay in this hospital. In your case, it would probably be closer to two to three weeks, though," Addison said, moving closer to her bedside. She sat down on the chair next to it. "You lost a lot of blood. We were lucky that we had someone in this hospital who has your blood type."

"I don't think my insurance covers that much," the younger girl sighed. She closed her eyes.

Addison felt a pang of guilt. No child of the Forbes-Montgomery family should ever have to worry about money. She bit her lip. She would take care of this. "That shouldn't be your main concern right now, Leila. Your health is more important."

"Right. Easy for you to say," Leila breathed.

"Excuse me?"

The brunette opened her eyes. Her voice was harsh when she spoke. "Look at you, _Doctor, _all decked up in expensive clothing, walking around in high heels that could buy _me _more thana month of food. How can someone like you have any idea how important money is to regular people when you obviously have plenty to throw around like—"

"Do you have anyone you'd like me to call?" Addison cut her off. "Any family member, friend?"

"No. I don't have any family and all my friends are in New York," Leila replied, calming down.

"The man… the one that was driving the car before you got into an accident—"

"They told me he was dead," Leila interjected. "Is he dead?"

"He is… he died at the scene before paramedics arrived. I'm very sorry for your loss," Addison said carefully. The man had been 42, according to his ID. She wondered if the man was her adopted father. She hoped he had taken good care of her when he was still alive. Addison observed Leila's reaction closely. She seemed to be taking this extremely well. _Too well, _Addison had found it strange how the girl didn't even seem to be grieving. "Were you close?" She asked.

"I don't know him."

"What?"

"We'd just met," Leila confessed.

"You got on a car with a total stranger?" Addison demanded. She knew it. She knew that any child of her and Mark would be trouble. This was why she'd never wanted children with him, god forbid he pass along one of his many character flaws onto their offspring. Mark had many good traits, she thought. Consequential thought was not one of them.

The girl turned to look at the doctor. This woman was furious! Wow. "What's it to you?" She challenged. "You're not my mother. I don't even _have_ a mother."

Right. It stung a little but Addison collected herself before carefully continuing. As professional and noncritical as she could, Addison asked, "Would you like me to run any tests?"

"I didn't have sex with him _yet," _Leila said, amused by the doctor's flustered attempt to hide her displeasure. "We met in a diner at a gas station. I told him I was single and that he should give me _a ride_."

Addison was horrified, and her facial expression showed it. If this was what happened _without_ Mark's influence, she was glad she'd never told him about the baby. If she was completely honest, she'd have to admit that she herself was never exactly the Virgin Mary, but this was definitely Mark's doing. Addison has never, in her entire life, walked up to a complete stranger and offered herself to him. This screams of Mark, not her. It was _his_ whorish genes that this poor girl inherited. She _so _should haved used a condom, Addison thought, cursing stupid, horny boys seducing stupid, horny girls, promising them that they'd done the pull-out method _many_ times before prematurely ejaculating inside of them.

"Not _that_ kind of ride," Leila snickered, unknowingly interrupting Addison's train wreck of thought. "I was going to say, that I suggested he give me a ride to the Olympic Sculpture Park."

"Oh!" Addison still thought she should have used a condom.

Leila, seeing Addison's reaction, decided to have a little bit of fun, and continued, "I was in the process of giving him the best head of his life—"

"Leila!" In her mind, Mark Sloan was already beaten to a bloody pulp.

The girl in question gave Addison a mischievous grin. "—When a truck ran past. Next thing I know, I was hurting all over and stuck inside an overturned car. I had to break the window with the headrest to get out, you know."

"You fought."

"Yeah, I did." Leila said, proudly. She became serious once again. "I fought and I won. Now how am I going to pay for all this?"

"The hospital has certain… funds, for this kind of situation," Addison lied, thinking quickly. Her pager sounded, and she stood up. "I have to go. I can get the paperwork done for you, so don't worry about it." Seeing her Leila relax, her mind raced. How was she going to pay the bills without proving what the entire hospital already suspects?

"I'd appreciate that. Thank you," Leila said. She offered Addison a small, sheepish smile. "And I'm sorry, for calling you a rich bitch earlier."

An eyebrow raised, Addison's lips quirked in a slight smile. The girl would never have gotten away with this if Addison had raised her. "You didn't. Up until this moment, you didn't."

"Oops," Leila said nonchalantly. Then, she laughed, her eyes sparkling, though her stomach hurt when she did.

"Don't rip your stitches," Addison called, before leaving the room. The talk had been, dare she say it, refreshing. She found herself thinking that Mark would easily like Leila, had he gotten to meet her, and immediately stopped herself. Pretending was good. It was less painful, and Addison knew better than anyone that the truth hurts.

* * *

They saw her exit the room and exchanged glances.

"Do you think she told her?" Meredith asked, slightly tilting her head so that she could see her friend's face.

"And walk out smiling? No way," Cristina said.

"Why would she even willingly go in there?" Izzie wondered. "I wouldn't."

"You would, after half a year, which was how long it took you to cash in your nine million dollar check," Cristina responded, to Meredith's amusement.

"This has nothing to do with the check," Izzie protested. "I deposited the check."

"Took you long enough to," Alex said, smirking.

"I heard she was the one that operated on her," George said. "That could be why she was in there…to check up on her. As a doctor."

At the same time, Alex spoke. "The better question is whether she'll tell Sloan. Five dollars says he finds out on his own."

"I think Derek will tell him," Meredith announced. She had inside information

Cristina leaned against the counter. "Who cares how he finds out," she said. "Do you think he'll have a stroke, seizure, or heart attack when he finds out? Oh I hope he'll need surgery."

"Cristina, that is wrong on so many levels," said George.

"Yeah and she calls _me_ Evil Spawn."

"Oh boo hoo, poor Alex," Cristina scoffed, pulling a face.

Izzie snorted. She looked at Cristina. "He's right, you know. You're like the morbid pot calling the kettle evil."

* * *

After the failed surgery, he left the OR, grabbed the patient's medical file and headed to the on-call room that he thought was empty to figure out what went wrong. He'd promised Alice a fast and easy operation. She would've been out of the hospital in a month, and now she's dead.

Derek found her alone, sitting on the bed in the on-call room. The room was nearly pitch black, save for the light from the hallways outside the room. She was staring at the wall, but he doubted that she was seeing much. He decided against turning on the lights. "Rough day?" He asked lightly, moving to sit next to her. He made sure to keep at least a feet between them, incase somebody were to walk in and get any interesting ideas. Hospital gossip spread faster than viral disease and he really didn't want Meredith to find out he was still associating with his ex-wife.

Addison turned to look at him with weary eyes.

"You're not speaking to me?" He asked, incredulous. "This is rich, Addison. I should be the one not speaking to you_."_

"And yet here you are," she drawled. She was exhausted. Surgery does that to a person. So does keeping secrets and putting on a brave and confident exterior when all she wanted to do was curl up into a ball and cry.

"I saw her earlier, your…uh, the patient from the car accident two days ago. Her CT scans are clear now."

Addison occupied herself with staring at the picture on the wall. _Please just leave,_ she thought.

"Once her blood count is up and her abdominal wounds are healed, she should be able to go home," he continued. When she didn't respond, he carried on. "Interestingly, when I asked her if she has anyone she'd like us to contact, she said she was just fresh out of the foster care system."

The trees in the painting were in many different colors. It could've been autumn. Addison would've known what the colors were, had the lights been on. She could tell it was an oil painting though, the brush strokes seemed raised…or maybe a cheap copy of an oil painting.

"She just turned eighteen, you know," Derek persisted. "Told me she was from New York City. _I _told her that I had lived in New York for a while as well. What a coincident, huh, Addie?"

_It was more than a while. Shut up, Derek, just shut up._

"She said she was taking a gap year; she'd already been accepted to NYU but she wanted a year off to travel, work, and figure herself out before diving headfirst into a program." Derek turned to have a better look at his ex-wife's face. "She seems like a pretty level-headed kid. Too bad she has _no idea_ who her parents are, nor do they seem to even _care_."

She didn't know why she was still sitting there, listening to him taunting her. She clutched the bed sheets, her knuckles turning white.

"And she's only eighteen…"

Her eyes darkened. "Do you have a question to ask me, Derek?" She lashed out in anger. "_Yes, _that girl is mine, and yes I gave up being a teenage mother to become a doctor. And in case you were wondering, _no, _I did not cheat on you in medical school. She's eighteen, Derek, do the math. I slept with him long before we'd met. _No, _I wasn't having an affair with Mark the entire duration of our marriage. _Yes, _I kept it from you but _congratulations _Derek, what we had in New York had been real. Can't say much for Seattle, though. Are you satisfied now, or do you wish to continue torturing me?"

Derek watched her get up, and before he could say anything, Addison strode out of the room, the door slamming shut behind her.

* * *

"Give him some time, Addie, he'll get used to us being here and being together," Mark soothed, rubbing patterns on her back, trying to calm her down. They were in her hotel room, lying on the bed, cuddling, after not having sex. Or more precisely, he was holding her while she just laid there, her heart pulsing erratically. She'd just owned up to him that Derek had cornered her that night, in an on-call room and that they'd had a 'talk', whatever that meant. He wanted to know what Derek had said to cause this kind of reaction, but Addison had completely shut him out when he asked, so for now he was content with just holding her. One hand on her stomach, he pulled her closer to him and placed a kiss on her shoulder blade. He froze when her head snapped up and she looked straight at him, her eyes filled with resentment. "Addison," he said, surprised.

She hated how clueless he was, because really, how dense do you have to be to not know about the single thing that an entire hospital can't seem to shut up about? A part of her wished he'd just find out on his own. She despised how _caring_ he was being. She didn't deserve this kind of love. "What?" She snapped, untangling her body from his. She moved away to her side of the bed, her hands wrapped around herself protectively, and turned to face him. He looked baffled, and he was hurt, she could tell, and she couldn't stand that, so she reached out to him, touching his face. "I'm sorry," she whispered, inching closer.

Mark grabbed the arm that was stroking the right side of his face. He looked into her eyes; the seductive, beautiful blue eyes he fell in love with, the sparkling crystals with corners that crinkled when she smiled. "I need to know what is going on between you and Derek," he told her. If there were still feelings, if Addison still had any feelings for Derek, he had to know. Mark braced himself for the worst.


	4. What Happened In New York

Mark studied her closely. Addison looked stunned for about three seconds. And then she started laughing. Hysterically laughing. Eyebrows drawn together, Mark's entire face crumpled from the combination of both confusion and annoyance. Did she think he was joking? It wasn't _irrational, _the idea, he thought. Derek and Addison _had_ loved each other for half a decade before they had gotten married, and it wasn't unnatural for old flames to rekindle.

For _their flame _to rekindle. He would know, Mark thought. He'd been there the entire length of the damn relationship. The three of them had been in their first year at Columbia, pre-clinical. The day after Derek met Addison—_Red, _Mark had often fondly called her back in undergraduate school—Derek had "introduced" her to Mark and their friends. Mark had stared at her for a long time, dumbfounded, before spluttering out a greeting. She had avoided his eyes and cleverly diverted her attention to the rest of the group. He remembered thinking smugly then that she had remembered him. That it wasn't only she that had made an impact on him. After she'd left, the guys had taken turns patting Derek on the back, voicing their approval. All of them, not unlike Derek, had been charmed by her wit and smile that had and still seemed to brighten up the room. Derek had soberly declared to everyone that day in the grungy bar, that she was The One, and Mark, the one that had always effortlessly gotten As and girls while Derek worked his ass off, had vowed never to take this away from his best friend, who was so much more deserving of her than Mark had been. He'd refused to ruin it for Derek. Addison had somehow neglected to mention it as well, Mark would find out a week later, and that was how the both of them had silently come to mutual agreement to never to let Derek know. Derek had been her cloudless future, whereas Mark had been her stormy past. Mark hadn't had the heart to steal the rainbows and sunshine from her.

And now it felt like medical school all over again, he thought bitterly. Now, whenever Mark and Addison were alone together, Derek would magically appear. If he were not lurking, he would be butting in with passive-aggressive comments about honesty, irking Addison. Addison herself seemed to be avoiding him at the hospital and whenever he and Derek were alone, Derek's facial expression would range from self-satisfaction to just plain guilty. And the whispering, the goddamn whispering and then hushed silences everywhere he went. What else was he supposed to think? And Addison was still laughing at him. He was starting to feel less confused and more irritated.

"You think—Derek and I have a—_a thing," _she choked. She was in convulsions. After everything she and Derek had done to hurt each other, Addison found it ridiculous that Mark would think they would be sneaking around _now, _of all times. For the first time in years, Addison could honestly say that was perfectly happy being together with Mark. She was _friendly _towards Meredith, for God's sake. She was finally past pining for Derek. Mark was being absurd.

The way she said it made it seem like it was impossible, laughable, and her laughter was infectious too, it seemed, because soon, he too was in stitches. He didn't even know what he was supposed to find so funny. "Addison."

She stopped, slowly coming down from her high. She took pity on him and began to speak. "There's nothing between me and Derek, Mark. If there were, I would be with him right now," she told him gently. He looked so confused and adorable and she wanted to kiss him. She found it sweet that he had been protective of her, maybe even jealous, when she was lying in her underwear, in bed with him, and not Derek. That alone should've answered his question, she thought.

Mark nodded, like a small child who was listening to his mother tell him not to climb on the monkey bars. The metaphorical mother didn't explain to the metaphorical child that it was dangerous to climb on top of the metaphorical monkey bars because he might fall and hurt himself, she had simply told him not to do so. Mark still wasn't completely sure that Addison was telling him everything, and that worried him.

"Hey," Addison touched his arm. "I love you. And I'm not going to stop anytime soon, okay?"

"Okay," he said hoarsely. He was a sucker when it came to professions of love, when it came to her. He would find out what it was that she was hiding later.

Addison moved closer to him, until their noses were touching. She smiled and closed her eyes when Mark put his arm around her. She listened until his breathing evened, signaling that he had fallen asleep, and opened her eyes. She sighed. She didn't know how long she was going to be able to keep this up. Eventually, she drifted off to sleep, her thoughts slowly becoming hazy and faded.

The two's breathing synchronized as they laid together in deep slumber. They did not toss nor turn.

* * *

Addison stood in front of the elevators, anxiously waiting. It was half past noon, she didn't have breakfast that morning and she had just scrubbed in on one of Burke's surgeries, monitoring the fetus while he cut its' mother's chest open. She was already thinking about her lunch order, when the elevator door opened and she came face to face with the two men she most did not want to see together. Derek looked startled to see her, and Mark looked like he wanted to punch something. Her stomach sank. Derek couldn't have…

The neurosurgeon hurried out of the elevator and briskly walked past his ex-wife without acknowledging her. He hoped that once Addison got on the elevator, Mark would ask her to have a talk with him and she would come clean and they would resolve everything far, far away from him. He had other things to worry about without his conscience always on his ass about Mark and Addison's wellbeing. Someone from the outside would think that Derek would be wishing for the relationship to just crash and burn; even _he_ found it strange that given their past, he of all people would care so much. But Derek felt guilty. It was essentially his absences that drove Addison away into Mark's open arms and because he was happy with how things had turned out, he wanted them, the two that he had once called his best friends, to be happy as well.

One of the elevator's occupants looked at her expectantly and Addison opened her mouth to say something but decided not to waste time. She turned around, saw a flash of curly dark hair and followed the owner of the curls.

* * *

_Drip, drip_

Leila sighed and tried to push the side of her head further into her pillow.

_Drip, drip_

"Drip, fucking drip," she muttered. How was she supposed to get any rest with that irritating, dripping shit of an IV next to her goddamn ear? The room was simply too quiet. That, or her mind was playing tricks on her again. The brunette turned to lie on her back. She'd always had sensitive ears. Back in grade school and ever since, she had never been able to stand the sound of pencil on paper, or markers for that matter. To her, they sounded like nails on chalkboard; the relentless _squeaking _that had always made her wince. She had trouble concentrating in Math class because of this. The sound of multiple pencils being used simultaneously, graphite scratching on surfaces all at the same time gave her goose bumps. Even _imagining _the sound gave her the shivers. If that wasn't crazy, Leila didn't know what was.

Okay, so maybe sitting at school until late in the evening every day until sophomore year, waiting for her mother or father to come pick her up, knowing they never would, was crazy as well. Leila found it embarrassing that it took her fifteen years to get over the fact that nobody was going to come looking for her. It was unreasonable, illogical, to think that if someone didn't want you then, maybe they would somehow magically want you now, she knew. It had taken her over a decade to come to terms with that. After that, she just didn't give a shit whether anyone showed up after school or not.

She didn't know how she'd brought herself to stop pathetically hoping and waiting for a parent to come around. Maybe it was the realization that she was pretty, beautiful even, and that guys liked her. They wanted to be in her presence, to talk to her, they wanted to walk her to class, eat lunch with her, and take her out… They _wanted _her. And she had loved all the attention she got.

James had given her that same kind of attention, when they'd met at the gas station. She had finished her breakfast and he had just gotten his. Before that, Leila had noticed how he had looked at her when he'd first walked in. Like he wished to order her, even if she was the most expensive thing on the menu. And she really needed a ride. So after downing her glass of cheap, concentrated orange juice, she had stalked over to the counter, where he was sitting and whispered and few things, did her magic as usual. She'd figured she could just flirt, build a connection and give him enough physical contact for him to get her to the park without her seeming like a hitchhiker. Or that she was just using him, because it was wrong to use people.

And somehow, something delightful got her here, Leila thought, rolling her eyes. It had to be karma. But the again if it were, James must've done something really awful.

* * *

"What did you tell him," Addison hissed, corning him into an empty on-call room.

"What he needed to know."

"It's not your place, not any of your business, you had no right," she shouted, forgetting that the door was open.

"He's my best friend!" Derek protested.

"Oh so now he's your best friend!" Addison exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. "Five seconds ago you wanted nothing to do with him, you had no _obligation _to even try. And now you're making it seem like you were trying to do the _noble _thing, because he's your _best friend," _she sneered and gave a mocking laugh.

"I didn't tell him anything. But he deserves to know," Derek said flatly. "You can't keep this from him."

"What I keep from Mark is none of your business! Why can't you just let it go?"

"How can you look him in the eye and _lie_ to him?" Derek shouted.

"You have no idea how hard it was, Derek, what I went through," she said, seething, her voice dropping dangerously low. "And after everything, you have the audacity to tell me what to do…"

"After everything…Really, Addison, you're going to bring that up like I still want to have anything to do with you," he said spitefully.

"Oh so you're interfering against your will," she scoffed contemptuously.

"I wouldn't have to if you would just tell Mark—" Derek stopped suddenly. He pressed his lips together and slowly shut his eyes.

Addison saw Derek's face and her eyes widened. _No, no… not like this. _She spun around.

"Tell me what?" Mark demanded.

He was furious, Addison could tell from his tone. His voice was level but there was an edge to it. She didn't know how long he had been standing there. She didn't dare look at his face.

Derek reached for her. "Addison, you should tell him. He would understa—"

He wouldn't. And so she brushed past Mark, who was hovering at the doorway and ran.

* * *

She kept walking. She didn't hear him call her name, she didn't hear the plea in his voice and she didn't hear his footsteps coming towards her. She didn't. She was going to go visit her patient, a 2-week old baby girl who needed a lung transplant. She didn't hear him, because if you ignore something hard enough, it doesn't exist.

"Addison, wait." She didn't even turn around, he thought miserably. "Addison," he said louder, his steps more frequent, trying to catch up with her. He raised his voice. "Addison!"

She stopped, and braced herself for the verbal lashing that she was about to receive, that she fully deserved. Mark had never yelled at her before, not even in New York, when she had came home and told him coldly that she had aborted their baby. Then, he had just sat down, the Yankees onesie still in his hand, and looked at her with the facial expression of a kicked puppy. It'd made her feel sick to her stomach. Owning up, being honest, it hurts.

His quickened his stride when he saw her come to a stop. They say the truth hurts, but for Mark, not knowing hurt the most, he thought. Being lied to over and over again, that was real pain. It ate him up inside, not knowing what Derek and Addison were doing behind his back, what they were hiding from him. It must be karma, he decided, in a bout of wretched self-loathing, and thought about everyone he had ever wronged in his life. Derek and Addison's wasn't the first marriage he had ruined by fucking one behind the other spouse's back. And now it was him, who was being fucked over. It was him now who was the idiot, not knowing what was going on. He felt like he was stuck in a cave that got smaller and smaller. It had boulders blocking the exit, and Derek and Addison were on the other side. He was going to be crushed, slowly. And it hurt like hell that the people responsible were the two people he loved the most.

Mark caught up with Addison and grabbed her shoulders, spinning her around. He didn't care that they were in a hospital hallway, and that there were some nosey interns and medical assistants eavesdropping nearby, all of them "just happening" to be working. Grabbing her wrists, he pushed her until her back hit the wall. He didn't use enough force to hurt her, he had at least that much self-control, but when he saw her bloodshot eyes well up with tears, he immediately loosened his grip. "Addison," he spoke, slowly and as softly as he could muster. "If you even love me at all, if you _ever," _he begged, his voice cracking. "Loved me."

Tears she had fought so hard against fell from Addison's eyes. Mark Sloan speaks with confidence, cocky arrogance. Mark Sloan's voice does not crack mid-sentence. He is not uncertain. He does not beg anyone for anything. Had she broken him?

Mark did not move to wipe away her tears. He looked into her eyes. "Addison you have to tell me what is going on."

"Okay," she said.

And he felt like one of the boulders had finally been lifted away, letting some light pass through to him.

* * *

When Mark was eleven, he spent his first Christmas with the Shepherds. Carolyn had invited him, after supper one day when he'd mentioned that his family had never celebrated a proper Christmas. And so that year, Mark put up stockings together with Liz, helped Derek and Amelia decorate the Christmas tree with ornaments and popcorn strings, something he had always seen on television but had never experienced up until that moment, and watched Nancy and Kathleen help "Mom" make dinner.

On Christmas morning, instead of sleeping in and then watching cartoons the whole day while eating cereal, an over-excited Derek Shepherd had woken up him up by loudly yelling in his ear for him to get up and go downstairs. After they had opened each of their presents and had leftover pumpkin pie for breakfast, the little Shepherds plus one little Sloan all rushed over to the living room, where all the adults, mainly Derek's extended family, were gathered. "Come on kids, it's time for a family photo!" Derek's Uncle Jerry had called and all of them except Mark dashed over to the tree. Mark remembered that he had stood alone awkwardly at the archway, feeling embarrassed and uncertain whether Uncle Jerry had meant him as well. "What're you waitin' for, young man, Christmas?" Uncle Jerry had bellowed to Mark, laughing at his own joke. Grateful, Mark had run over to where Derek stood. He remembered Derek turning around and catching his eye. Derek had had a look that was filled with so much pity and kindness, and Mark knew that he would never forget that look and that moment.

A lot of things had happened since then and Mark almost did forget, until about an hour ago, when he had been on that elevator and Derek had worn that exact same expression from twenty-seven years ago on his face. "Where's, uh, Addison?" Derek had asked him and then literally jumped when the elevator doors opened to an equally surprised Addison. After watching his girlfriend, lover, or whatever, ignore him to go after Derek, Mark had gotten off at the nearest floor and had taken the stairs up to find the both of them at each other's throats in an on-call room.

Consequently, Addison had uncharacteristically walked away, leaving a stunned Mark and an emotionally exhausted Derek sitting on the floor, his head buried in his hands. "You weren't supposed to find out this way," Derek had mumbled apologetically before Mark decided to run after Addison.

And now there he was, standing inside the fire exit, leaned against the wall, opposite her, who was sitting on the steps, her hands clasped together as if in a prayer, her red eyes looking everywhere other than at him.

"It's been forty minutes now, Addison, whatever you have to say just spit it out," he told her tiredly.

She finally looked at him. He had obviously calmed down, unlike her, whose heart was still beating so fast that her silent wish for a heart attack didn't seem so drastic anymore.

"Addison."

She slowly let out the breath of air that she had been holding in. "You should sit down."

Mark debated on staying exactly where he was. She was, after all, the one who was in the wrong here. He didn't have to care nor comply with any of her requests.

"Sit down," Addison repeated. It wasn't a suggestion.

"Okay," said Mark, as he moved to sit next to her.

Addison wished they were someplace else. An empty, padded room would be ideal, so that Mark wouldn't have anything to punch or hurt himself with after she tells him. But as Bizzy or Mick Jagger would say, you can't always get what you want. "Do you remember Yale?" She asked quietly. "Summer after third year."

"You went back to Connecticut, came back two months after class started and never spoke to me again," Mark nodded. Until Derek, that was. Addison had avoided him after classes, ignored all of his calls and pretended she was away when he came to her apartment. He had figured he had done something to piss her off, or that she'd found someone else over the summer and was the inexperienced type of girl who disliked confrontation and was unable to maintain a friendship with an ex. Not that they had been officially _together. _Their relationship had begun from friendship and although they had certainly acted _like_ a couple, Mark remembered that he had never once during those three years asked her to be his girlfriend. He had given up on her after sixty days of trying and failing to contact her and had spiraled downwards into the mind-numbing, self-destructive hole of grief, alcohol and meaningless sex. He recalled half-drunkenly calling out Addison's name while in bed with a blonde, mumbling "Red" into her neck and later getting kicked out of her dorm. The grief eventually stopped, the alcohol became less frequent, but the last prevailed all throughout college and medical school.

"I never went to Connecticut," she declared.

"What?"

Addison raked a hand through her hair and kept her eyes purposefully off him before continuing. "I was in New York, in a shelter." She could feel his eyes burning onto her. "Giving birth."

"Addison?" He abruptly turned to look at her. She looked distant, and didn't meet his gaze. She gave birth? What the hell, he thought, why was she telling him this? "Oh my god."

"When you have children young, you barely show, you know," Addison said, her voice raspy. "I pretended I was hung-over when morning sickness kicked in, wore oversized dresses to class and kept to myself. And I spent summer break in a ratty, shared-bedroom at a shelter for homeless people in Brooklyn where I gave birth to our daughter in a cot, next to a black man and a nun." The room had been dark, there was only one light source in the room and it was barely working, often eerily flickering on and off. The room had reeked of piss and cigarettes and god knows what else and every night, the sound of rats scuttling on the ceiling and the thought of the unfamiliar man had kept her from sleeping. She hadn't wanted to go to the hospital, even though she definitely had the money to, because then the credit card bills would be mailed to either Bizzy or the Captain. She had not wanted to be on her own, because she had been deathly afraid of killing the baby, or herself. So Addison had gone to Safe Haven Homeless Shelter and begged one of the Sisters to take her in. She had never known what it was like to hit rock bottom before the moment she started having contractions in that health hazard of a room. Addison shut her eyes, struggling to not relive the moment.

Mark felt dizzy and grabbed what he could of the cemented steps. He wanted to vomit. She said _our_ daughter. He has a daughter. Had a daughter.

"I told you that I was going to Connecticut, Bizzy thought I was in Europe. Nobody ever found out," Addison breathed. She turned to the silent man beside her. "Mark?"

"You gave birth to our child in college," he rasped, incredulous, staring at her like he couldn't believe what he was saying. Their eyes met, finally, and her face contorted. Addison suddenly broke down, crying in anguish at the reality of it all. She cried like someone she loved had died. Mark pulled her into a tight embrace, his face troubled as she buried her face into the crook of his neck.

"Mark, I—gave birth to our daughter alone—in a dirty—homeless shelter," Addison choked between sobs.

He let her cling onto him for a moment, running his fingers through her hair, trying to calm her down. "Shh, it's okay, baby, it's gonna be okay," he whispered as she gasped for her breath and cried about how scared she had been. "I'm here," he soothed. "I can't imagine how hard it must've been for you to go through that all by yourself, to loose your baby…"

What? Addison tensed up immediately. She pulled herself free from his arms, sniffling. "She didn't die." Her voice was strong when she spoke.

Mark's eyes hardened. He stood up. _"What did you do?"_ He asked accusingly.

She resented his tone, that much she knew. "I gave her up, Mark, for her own good," she replied harshly, standing up as well. Addison intentionally left out that she was here, right now, in this hospital where they both worked.

She couldn't have. Mark was momentarily stunned. She did. She gave their baby, _his _baby up for adoption without telling him. It was like Carson all over again. If she had told him and kept their daughter, he would've married her, no matter what their parents said. They would've been together. She would never have married Derek and she would've spared all of them from all the heartache, he couldn't help but think. Angrily, he took a step back away from her. "Didn't you think I had a say, a right to decide what was best for my child?" He growled.

"Like you wouldn't have done the same thing," she retorted.

"See, this is what you do, Addison, you make assumptions and judgments and you think you are always right. You refuse to accept the truth. _You're crazy_ if you honestly think there was nothing wrong with what you did," he threw his hands up in the air.

"We were _barely twenty, _Mark, we didn't have the means to raise a child!" She insisted. The both of them had planned on going to medical school together right after college. Mark had had his eyes set on Columbia since their second year, and had successfully persuaded her as well. She had thought of their future, as well as her child's, when she had made her decision. Medical school, internship and residency were hard enough without throwing an innocent baby into the mix. She'd known what it was like growing up in a family that lacked sufficient time and love and she'd sworn never to willingly subject her kids to that kind of treatment.

"When we had the means, in New York," he began, loudly.

Addison saw the contempt in his eyes. "That is irrelevant," she cut him off, glaring. "This is an entirely different matter."

"You _killed_ our son!" Mark yelled. He saw her wince at the word and didn't care. He just kept going. "You weren't satisfied with taking _one child _away from me; no, you just _had _to do it for a second time, didn't you?"

"That's not fair, Mark, I did not intentionally—"

He didn't let her finish. "This is just fuckin' fantastic, isn't it Addie! I have one missing kid who has grown up in God knows what sort of living condition and another one who's dead because _Mommy _didn't love Daddy enough to let it live! Or maybe they're _both _dead; the first one could've died on the streets for all I know, but I _don't _know, because the mother of my children _never even told me about them until after it was too late!" _His shout echoed inside the fire escape.

_Too late, too late, too late_

She cringed at the sound. "It was eighteen years ago, Mark, I was trying to do what I thought was best for everyone," Addison pleaded. "And she's not dead—"

He didn't hear a thing she said. "It wasn't your call to make!" He took a threatening step towards her. "For both times. A part of me died when you came home that day and told me you'd terminated the pregnancy. All I could think of was that if it had been Derek's, the baby would still be alive. If _I had been Derek, _maybe you wouldn't have killed our son!"

"I had an abortion, Mark. You cheated on me. You weren't ready to have a child. You didn't even want one. And in college, I did what I had to do." She raised her voice before continuing. "Can you even pause the screaming for a moment and think long and hard about what it would've been like? Did you honestly want to raise a child on a college campus? Or ship her off to either of our parents? Do you really think things would've turned out better if we had kept her then? Did you want to live life alternating between class lectures and a screaming baby? Did you want to be stuck at home changing diapers and cleaning up _vomit_ and spilled milk while your friends were out _partying?"_

"I would've done it for you!" He thundered.


	5. Twenty Questions

Please enjoy this one! Reviews are greatly appreciated x

* * *

Addison sat on floor of the fire exit, her back against the railing. _"I would have done it for you!" _Mark had yelled and she had gone quiet afterwards. After a few minutes of stunned silence, she'd sat down. She didn't know what to say. He'd poured his heart out to her and yet she still couldn't bring herself to tell him the other part of the truth. The fact that his daughter—_their daughter—_was still alive, right there in Seattle Grace, actually, though God knows how she ended up there of all places. Addison still couldn't get over the fact that Leila had traveled across the country, only to get into an accident in the city, and be sent to the exact hospital her biological parents worked at. If there was a God, He—or She, her feminist side thought—was probably laughing hysterically throughout the entire ordeal. Addison would. Laugh at herself, if she were someone else. That was a horrible thought. No wonder God has it in for her. She was a horrible person to find something so unfortunate so funny. What wasn't funny was having to deal with it all by herself. She probably deserved it, anyway. She deserved every mean word Mark threw her way.

"So, what now," the man said, dully. He too was sat down. When she didn't respond, Mark had briefly thought about walking away. He'd wanted to. He would have slammed the door as hard as he could as well. And then go punch a mirror in some bathroom. But a stubborn voice in his head that sounded like himself had told him, _"You're not Derek." _Addison deserved better, he'd thought, no matter what she had done. _He _deserved better. He deserved a lot more than a yelling match in an empty fire exit. A curious thought that hadn't occurred to him before was _how _Derek knew. Huh. "When did Derek find out?" He asked her, feeling worn out. He was way past yelling now. But he could start again, if she even so much as tell him that Derek had known for years, that she and Derek had kept the secret from him _together _for half their lives. His jaw froze in anticipation.

"Two days ago," Addison replied honestly. Mark was getting warmer and warmer to the subject and Addison felt uneasy. She braced herself for the question that would undoubtedly come next.

"How?" He demanded. Two days, his mind played with the thought. So it was only recently. That's a good thing. He still didn't know _how _his best friend, whom although was the ex-husband, was _not _the father, knew before him. He wanted answers, and if she didn't start talking in five seconds, Mark was going to yell, he resolved.

_Oh God, here we go. _"He did a medical check-up on her." Addison bit her lip. Did he expect her to continue? She didn't want to. She decided to just wait for his questions instead of elaborating herself. She knew it might possibly irritate him, but at least she was being honest now, he had to give her some credit for that.

"What?"

"Derek did a neurological examination on our daughter," Addison automatically responded. She mentally beat herself with an imaginary stick when she realised she'd basically answered a rhetorical question.

Too many thoughts were running in Mark's head at once for him to be comfortable. Derek examined her. So she was alive. How can she be alive? She's alive, his daughter was alive…he has a daughter. Mark gulped. But Addison had her in New York… Derek never left the city in the past two days, he knew, because if he had it would have been all around the hospital like wildfire. So that meant… "She's here?" Mark exclaimed and his throat became drier as what felt like a lump formed inside. His eyes became glossy. He was _not _going to cry. "Addison?" She looked up to meet his eyes and he knew. She was here. "Is she here now?"

"Yes." Addison stared. She was startled when he stood up, towering over her. Addison quickly got to her feet as well. She looked at him anxiously. Was he going to hit her? She internally cringed at the thought. If Mark hit her, she would be able to live with that. She had too much pride and Mark had too much love. Had, she thought. She didn't expect him to still love her after all this. She was a bit of a hopeless romantic at heart, but she wasn't that naïve, to think that love conquered all or whatever cheesy love quote. She definitely didn't expect Mark to hug her, crying into her shoulders.

He wasn't crying. He was shedding manly tears, tears of a father whose daughter was still alive. He somewhat realized that he was ruining her blouse with his tears. They were made of the kind of fussy fabric that could only be dry-cleaned. She deserved it, he thought, blowing his nose into her shirt as well. He let go shortly afterwards and dried his eyes with his sleeves. Mark took a step backwards. He didn't want her to think he had _forgiven her. _She was the most self-righteous, infuriating woman he ever knew. She didn't think she had done anything wrong; she'd never even _apologize _for not telling him, for making decisions they were supposed to make together, for hiding their daughter in the hospital. He would not forgive her for all those things.

"Mark."

Addison looked bewildered, worried and relieved at the same time. It was a weird look on her. Both that, and the paleness of her face was a weird look on her. She looked like she didn't have blood running through her at all. _Blood. _Realization dawned on him. "I gave her my blood," he rasped. He was an O-negative. It had to be for her.

"Yes," Addison affirmed. She was reduced to single syllables now.

"What's wrong with her?" A million diseases ran into his mind. _Please don't let it be leukemia, _he prayed silently to a God he didn't believe exist.

There was fear in his eyes. "Car accident."

"What the fuck are we playing, _twenty questions,_ Addison?" He burst out, exasperated. "Would you kindly elaborate?" He said sarcastically. He was getting impatient and annoyed, leaning more towards annoyed.

Addison winced when he raised his voice. She really didn't like it when people shouted. It reminded her of her worse childhood days. She bit her bottom lip again, drawing blood, before explaining. "She came in three days ago after a car accident. She had abdominal injuries as well as some lacerations on her face and body from crawling out of a broken window. I operated on her and asked Derek to do a neuro exam the next day. She's fine now."

Thank God. "You told Derek she was our daughter?" His nostrils flared. He was pissed at her, again.

"No." She felt like cowering under his glare.

"For God's sake, Addison, please expand on your answers," he drawled out the last three words. Was she doing this on purpose?

"She has your last name," Addison choked.

"What?" His brows furrowed. She gave her his last name?

"Leila Sierra Sloan," Addison said quietly. "They'd let me name her before they took her away."

"And Derek immediately thought she was ours? Well that's a shitty basis," he said bluntly. "Sloan isn't some exotic, unique name."

"You have the same blood type," Addison reminded him.

"Doesn't mean shit," Mark said. "Does she look like me?"

"No." She immediately continued when he gave her a pointed look. "Well, she has your eyes, and your hair color." She left out the fact that their daughter had picked up on some of Mark's _interesting _traits as well. He wouldn't react well if she told him Leila had his slutty genes.

"And the rest is all you." She must be beautiful too, then.

"Yes."

"Does she know?"

"What?"

"Does she know about us?"

"No," Addison admitted. "I only spoke to her once."

"What's she like?"

Mark was starting to sound like himself now, casually speaking to her like they hadn't been shouting at each other an hour ago. That made her relax a little. "Well, she's funny, sassy, has little respect for people. Or maybe just for me," Addison smiled a little at that. "She's _very _open, she's brave, bright too—Derek said she'd gotten in to NYU—she's friendly, a bit crude, she gets that from you…"

Mark watched her intently as she spoke. His daughter sounded awesome, he thought triumphantly. He always knew any child of his would be awesome. He was halfway through a smile when a thought passed over him.

Addison saw the uncertainty in his face and stopped, waiting for him to speak.

"Should I meet her?" He asked, timidly, if there was such a thing as Mark Sloan being timid. He looked confused and conflicted. What would he introduce himself as? What would he say? What if she hated him? What if she hated both of them for abandoning her? What if she turns out to be really fucked up on the inside, like he was?

Addison stuttered when she replied. "I—I, I think it's up to you, Mark."

"Okay."

"I don't think we should tell her," Addison said quickly. "That she's ours, you know."

"Why the hell not?" Mark demanded, even though he too could think of a couple of reasons not to and a multitude of not-too-pleasing possible scenarios.

"She's a teenager. She'd basically grown up on her own," Addison began. "And I don't know how to even _begin _to tell her," she confessed.

"Yeah." Mark stared. "Neither would I." You can't exactly walk into some poor girl's room and go, _Hey, nice weather here, huh? Well, no, I'm lying; I hate the rain. Makes me miserable. Oh and by the way, I'm your father. Yeah, I know right. Your mom never told me about you either. What a bitchy thing to do. So… Do you like the rain?_

"She told me she had no family," Addison said. She didn't know why she told him that, but now at least they didn't have to go through the drama of meeting the adoptive parents. If he could only look on the bright side, and stop glowering for a moment… It was making her uneasy. Not that she had been comfortable before. "Uh, you might want to know how she got here first, before talking to her." She had some idea of how Mark would react after finding out that his only daughter was _slightly _promiscuous and offers sex to strangers in exchange of rides. "The man she was with in the car—"

She was being honest and talking on her own; a refreshing change. He appreciated that, but he thought she still owed him an apology for all the bullshit she put him through. He'd save that for later. Now, he had a daughter to meet. "I want to see her," he declared, cutting her off. "Today. You said she got scars on her face from the glass, right? Tell her that I'm your consult for possibilities of reconstructive surgery, skin growing or whatever shit you can pull out of ass. Lie. Make something up. Shouldn't be so hard for you, huh?" He said cruelly.

* * *

"Leila, this is Dr. Mark Sloan, the head of our Plastics department here at Seattle Grace. He wanted to meet you in case you had any questions about your facial scars from the accident." Addison said, forcing a bright smile when she walked into the room. She could already hear Bizzy's disapproving voice telling her that she had made a terrible mistake. Strangely, it was followed by Archer's obnoxious laugh as he taunted her. _You go, sis, _Archer's voice laughed. It wasn't a mean laugh, but rather a surprised and genuinely amused one at the ridiculousness of the entire situation. _Of all your male friends you decide to procreate with, it had to be the one I hate the most, _she could imagine Archer snickering. _Dear, why are you playing pretend? Tell the poor child you are her mother! And please kindly tell her that nothing but an Ivy is a suitable university for a Forbes-Montgomery, _Bizzy's voice interrupted. _I'm slowly going insane, _Addison realized. Or she already was. She was hearing Bizzy and Archer at the same time; that _cannot _be normal.

The resemblance was breath taking. She looked so much like her. So much like _Addison, _Mark had to stop breathing and just stare, losing himself into the sight before him. Curious grey eyes—_his _eyes, Mark realized, a lump forming in his throat and he willed his eyes not to water—met his and he had to take a step back. She has his eyes. And his mother's hair, he gulped. He had a daughter. He and Addison had a daughter. This was their daughter. _He had daughter._

"Did you have work done, or is that face naturally gorgeous?" Leila blurted her face serious. She thought he neuro-dude was handsome but _Jesus _this guy was hot. And probably twenty years older than she was. Open mouth, insert foot, Leila thought. She did not just flirt with a doctor. The poor man looked so bewildered and tense that she took pity on him and decided to stop. "I'm sorry if that made you uncomfortable. If it helps, we're probably never going to see each other again," she said cheerfully.

_My own daughter just hit on me. _Mark wrinkled his nose. That comment was so… unladylike, his mother would say. Was she that forward with everyone? He didn't know whether to laugh or to be concerned. He looked to Addison for help but her face remained stoic. He shuffled over closer to the bed and tried to be as professional as he could. "It's alright. So, do you have any questions or concerns about your healing process? Any interest in plastic surgery…"

"Uh, no, not really. I'm not going to need surgery, am I?" Leila asked worriedly.

"No, no," Mark said quickly. This was bad. The girl only had stitches on the side of her face and he was suggesting she go under the knife. He was a terrible doctor. "You're going to have to come back to have your stitches removed, though, and get another CT scan to be on the safe side. If you have any questions…"

"Gotcha." Leila waited for the doctors to leave. The woman in the corner made no attempt to move while Dr. Sexy just stared at her like she was the eighth wonder of the world.

"And you don't have any questions?" Mark asked awkwardly. God, he was bad at this. Why was Addison just standing there? She was supposed to help him. She owed him this. He turned to see her smirking. _That evil bitch. _

Addison's lips twitched in amusement as she watched Mark stand before his daughter, wide-eyed like a deer caught in headlights. He had essentially repeated the same thing three times in a row. He obviously had not planned a speech and was apparently crap at improvising. She knew it was wrong to enjoy it as much as she did. She couldn't wait until Leila gives him a piece of her mind.

Leila raised her eyebrows but kept her mouth shut. Pretty face, empty mind, she thought, disappointedly. Like Ken, minus Barbie—that slag. She'd never liked Barbie. Not that she had ever owned one, but unlike all the other girls at the Home—it wasn't actually home, a real home isn't capitalized—she'd never wanted one. At ten, she'd already alienated herself from the girls her age by announcing that Barbie was an ungrateful, privileged airhead with too many clothes and too little facial expressions. She remembered thinking how freaky it was that all the dolls had the same fake frozen smile, as if happiness was the only feeling a human could experience. Ken was lucky he was hot, she thought as she bit her tongue.

"Okay, no questions," Mark quickly concluded, his face burning. "I should go now." This wasn't exactly going as he had planned. Dejected, he turned to walk towards the door.

"Wait—" Leila called. "What did she say your name was?"

* * *

Thirteen years ago, if someone had came to Derek Shepherd and told him that the love of his life would cheat on him with his best friend, that he would move to rainy Seattle and cheat on _her _with an intern, then later divorce his wife and break up with the intern, Derek would have laughed in the person's face. If the person had told him that he would be standing outside a hospital room window, watching Mark, Addison and their _child—_god it seemed so absurd—Derek would have called the cops on the crazy bastard and recommended they put him or her in a psychiatric hospital. He would've gone back to the hospital where Mark, Sam, Naomi and his fiancée were doing their clinical year and told them, between bursts of laughter, all about the psychic whack's "predictions" and it would have been the funniest thing all of them had heard that week. Later, though, in a moment of insecurity, Derek would have asked Mark, half-jokingly, whether Mark and Addison had a lovechild that he was unaware of and Mark would have ruptured an aneurysm from laughing so hard.

At the moment, though, Derek could see that Mark was definitely not amused. On the contrary, he looked nervous and uncomfortable, something Derek had not seen in a while. Addison wasn't faring much better, but Derek had to give her points for her poker face. Her facial expression, unlike Mark's, did not display any sign of discomfort or fear; it was damn near perfection and Derek admired his ex-wife for that. What showed her lack of confidence was the fact that she had positioned herself in a corner, as far away from Mark and the patient—their kid, Derek had to remind himself—as possible and that she didn't seem to be saying a thing.

She might have talked, introduced Mark to the girl before Derek had got there, but at the moment, she was backed up against the wall as if she were trying to disappear, or blend in. Derek had to smile at the thought. Addison would never blend in. Apart from the hair that ensured she would never be lost in a crowd, there was just this thing about her that demanded people's attention wherever she went. She'd used to be shy and had felt uneasy during presentations though god forbid she ever show it, or when meeting new people, Derek remembered fondly. Now, as one of most renowned doctors—world class, double-board certified OB/GYN and neonatal surgeon, as Addison would say—of their time, she had gotten used to people paying attention to her and grew out of her inhibited self.

He, too, had changed. Derek cringed as he remembered his childhood years of being a lanky, acne-ridden band geek with unruly hair. After his father died, he'd gone through a phase where he harbored a secret obsession with blood and gore. He had hated himself, stopped talking to his other geeky friends and ate lunch alone at school until he met Mark, the bored-looking kid with dark circles under his eyes, who'd showed him how fun it could be to be part of "the guys". Together, they had played harmless but insanely fun pranks, usually on one of Derek's sisters, all through out middle school and high school, even though Mark had joined the school's football team and had become effortlessly popular among girls and guys alike. By the end of high school, Derek had outgrown his Afro and acne and even had a girlfriend who wasn't in the band. When he and Mark had parted for college, Derek was as dashingly handsome as ever and had a newfound appreciation for himself and the world. Mark, whose dark under eyes had disappeared, looked striking with his gelled up hair and boyish smile, had outgrown his fear of the dark. Derek remembered thinking that he wouldn't be here without Mark, and that Mark too, wouldn't be here without him.

Derek was staring into the room, smiling nostalgically when Meredith appeared next to him, the smell of her shampoo and perfume alerting him of her presence.

"She's told him," Meredith said simply.

Derek grinned. "She had."

"I thought you'd be upset, angry… McFurious and whatever," she said. It was odd to her. How do you hide something like that from your _husband? _Meredith wondered. And they had lived together, had dinner together. Slept on the same bed every night. He should've had seen her naked at some point. Something must have been _really _wrong in their marriage if Derek hadn't noticed that his then-wife was pregnant and freaking gave birth. And she thought her family was screwed up. Thatcher wasn't the sharpest scalpel on the operating table, but he hadn't been completely ignorant when her mother had fallen pregnant. At least _they _had had a sex life, Meredith thought. The thought was disturbing but it was true. How else had she been conceived? Addison and Derek's McMarriage must have been pathetic. But then, if it had sucked that badly, why did it take Derek so long to sign the McDivorcePapers? "Unless you'd already known."

"I had not." Did she honestly think he would have been able to stay married to Addison for so long if Addison had given birth to another man's child during their relationship? Through the glass windows, he could see Mark quickly relaxing, engaging the girl in a conversation as he eased himself into the chair at the patient's bedside. Across the room, not unlike Derek, Addison stood smiling at the scene before her. The corners of his mouth curved upwards at that.

"Then why are you smiling?" She demanded, in her tiny voice that didn't sound the least bit threatening.

"Addison had the baby before we met," Derek told her, as it finally dawned on him that Mark didn't steal Addison away from him, it was the other way around, and Mark had let him. A part of Addison had always loved Mark, as the father of her child. She had never been fully his.

* * *

"So we share the same last name and blood type," Leila repeated. The male doctor had just stuttered that his name was Sloan when the female who had previously kept quiet in the corner helpfully added that he was the doctor that had given her blood when she had gone into shock. Her eyebrows furrowed. Leila didn't believe in coincidences. "Could we be cousins or something?" It was possible. She'd grown up alone, in foster care with no memory or token of her parents except for her name, which she was told her mother had chosen for her. Maybe her mother or father had siblings who had children, or maybe she and the doctor shared a grandparent…

Addison held her breath waiting for Mark's respond.

Mark felt like everything was frozen, like he was stuck in time and time was running out. Was he in over his head? His forehead crinkled and his eyes looked into his daughter's identical ones when he finally spoke. "Or something, yeah," he breathed.

"Cool," Leila shrugged. "Do you want to sit down?" she asked and beckoned at the chair next to her bedside. "I haven't spoken to anyone in _hours. _If you don't save me, I'll go crazy."

His eyebrows drew close together in confusion. Did she just change the topic?

"Dr. Sloan?" Addison quickly spoke up and stepped forward, coming to his rescue. She decided to offer him a chance to leave if all of it was becoming too overwhelming for him. "Do you have an appointment?"

"I, uh, no!" Mark cleared his throat. "I don't. Thank you Dr. Montgomery." He gave her a grateful look. Flashing Leila one of his infamous smiles, he mock-bowed. "Your wish is my command."

Addison smiled as Mark walked over to sit beside Leila, the younger girl beginning to talk rapidly, ranting about the dull and tasteless decoration in the room, and about how people have come up with machines and robots that could perform surgery but somehow none of the geniuses have managed to invent an IV that can drip silently, causing Mark to laugh. She cleared her throat and both of them looked up at her. She was slightly taken aback by the two identical pair of eyes but collected herself and spoke, "I think I should go." Addison didn't want to intrude.

"No, stay," Leila insisted. "Unless you have somewhere else to be. You're the rich doctor from the other day, right?"

Addison raised her eyebrows.

"I take that as a yes. Will you stay?"

Addison looked at Mark questioningly. He gave her a weird, 'whatever' look and shrugged. "Sure," she said, moving back towards the corner and leaned against the wall comfortably.

"I didn't ask you to stay so that you can hide in a corner, you know," Leila said patronizingly.

Mark sniggered.

Addison stuck her tongue in her cheek and rolled her eyes but walked over to the side of the bed. It was her own fault for not raising her, Addison reason, trying to calm down. She sighed.

"Can you not tower over us?" Leila asked in her whiniest, most annoying voice. It was fun to see the doctor struggle to maintain a cool façade.

"Yeah, like, _oh-em-gee, can you like, sit down?" _Mark joined in, his voice high-pitched and girly, trying to mimic one of his teenage patients.

They all cracked up as Addison pulled a chair over to the bedside opposite Mark and sat down. "Sooo, I'm here now," she began, smirking. "What are we going to do, Missus Leila Sloan, have a tea party?"

Leila became silent. She hasn't exactly planned that far yet. She turned to the female doctor whose name she doesn't yet know, and looked closely at her face, something Leila had never done before, she usually just looked at guys. Her eyes are pretty, she thought. What the hell... Her eyes narrowed. "Who are you, and _why do you look like me?"_

* * *

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	6. Papa Don't Preach

The IV dripped.

And she thought Bizzy and the Captain giving each other the silent treatment during breakfast after they'd had a loud, drunken argument the night before was uncomfortable. When Addison was too young to know any better, she'd thought her family was normal. She had grown up believing that _all _parents had their children refer to them by their nicknames, only have physical contact with their kids when other people were present, and only fought behind closed doors when they thought their nobody was listening. She'd presumed all mothers and fathers were curt, formal, and painstakingly polite to one another at home, and affectionate and loving at dinner parties.

Archer had too, she suspected, until he, having reached the age where he was allowed to go over to his friend's house, had discovered differently. She clearly remembered how angry—and probably confused as hell, too, now that Addison thought about it—"Archie" had been that day when he had arrived home. The two had always stuck together; it didn't matter that she was young and annoying or that he would sometimes make her cry, he would always be the one to apologize after a fight and make it up to his little sister. Archer had always made time for her, giving her all the warmth and attention that her parents denied her of. That day, five-year-old Addison had been sitting on the velvet lounge chair near the door, waiting patiently, like every other day, for her big brother to come home from school. He'd promised her the day before that after his "very hard test time" at school was over, he would show her how crystal candy was made and later, they would make microwaved popcorn—all by themselves, no helpers or housekeepers allowed—and watch a movie together until the Captain got home. Which was _really _late and way past Addison's bedtime. But when her brother had stormed into the house that evening, he had walked right past her as if she wasn't even there. She recollected that she had run after him, calling out her brother's name, as he clambered up the spiral staircase, and that he had turned around, irritated. "Not now, Addie," Archer had snapped, before going into his room and slamming the door behind him. Addison recalled that she had stood there, in the middle of the stairs, sniffling, until a guilt-ridden Archer came back out for her moments later. He didn't tell her why he'd been upset until years later when _she _had walked into his room with the same angry look on her face.

They had never confronted their parents, never once asked why their family lacked all the feelings and emotions other families seemed to naturally exude. The two siblings had just gone on with their lives, trying to maintain a functional brother-sister relationship in their cold, beautiful, expensive wreck of a family. It had been enough for a while, just the two of them, but then Archer had started dating, although it hadn't been so bad, they'd just spent less time together. Finally, Archer had left the house—left _her—_for college, and Addison's days at home were spent studying alone in her room and having tense "family meals" with forced conversations and awkward silences.

It couldn't have been that horrible, Addison thought, because if those childhood moments had been truly uncomfortable, _this _should be easy as pie. _This _referring to the resonating silence in the room, as both Mark's and their child's eyes bore into her. She wanted the ground to split in half and swallow her into the core of the earth.

"Well technically, _you_ look like her," Mark stated plainly, taking pity on Addison and breaking the ice. No matter how furious he had been—no, was—at Addison, seeing her struggle to even breathe, let alone speak, was not something he enjoyed. "Because, you know, she was born first," he quickly added. He, too, felt uneasy as hell. _Say something, Addison. _He gave her a look.

_She was born first. Wow, really? No shit, dude. Are you sure? That was helpful. Way to go, Einstein! Was she really? How could you tell? Such brilliant deductive reasoning you got there, Detective. I never would have guessed. A round of applause for this clever man, please! So. Smart. _Leila had about a hundred responses running through her mind, none of them very friendly nor polite so instead, she pretended not to have heard him.

"Hey, when's your birthday?" Mark asked Leila, in a desperate attempt to get someone, _anyone _else to speak.

"Seventeenth of July."

"Leo, right?" He'd seen one of the nurses discussing their horoscopes that morning, some astrological bullshit in a magazine about birthdates affecting someone's personality and future. _Damnit, Addison, say something._

_Dude, really? _"Cancer."

"Oh, no wonder you're so _crabby!"_ Mark said, forcing a laugh.

"Okay."

"Addison," Mark warned. He didn't know how long he could take this for. If she didn't speak up soon, Mark was sure that he would either start yelling, tell the girl himself or walk out and none of those were great ideas. The redhead gave him a blank stare. "Addie?"

"So, you know each other," Leila finally rasped. Her throat was dry. She reached for some water but the female doctor handed her cup to her. She took a long sip, thinking. Okay, so the doctor wasn't going to answer her. But there was definitely something going on. Otherwise, the doctor would have said something and she would have said something and the other doctor, Ken, would have said something, and she would have said another thing and the other doctor would get paged and then say something else and both doctors would have left by now.

"We do," Addison replied.

_Oh she _didn't _lose her voice, _Leila thought, irritated, but refrained herself from speaking. "How well?"

"Quite well."

"For fuck's sake, Addison," Mark growled. Quite well. Really? Well, if 'quite well' meant they'd been lovers for three years, friends for over twenty, fucked _quite _a few times and had a child together, then, okay, they knew each other _quite well. _How long was she going to keep prolonging this goddamn conversation for? Patience was never his strong suit.

"Mark." Addison's face burned. It was one thing for him to verbally abuse her in private, she'd had it coming and fully accepted it then, but she certainly didn't appreciate him using that kind of tone when somebody else was present. Especially when that somebody was their daughter, whether the girl knew it yet or not.

"Dr. Montgomery and I know each other _very _well, Leila," Mark corrected as he watched Addison fidget with the button on her coat.

"Okay?" Leila said nervously. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife.

_Come on, Addie, just tell her already, _Addison could hear Archer say to her in that bored voice of his. _She's going to find out anyway, so why not spare yourself and everyone else the time, Kitten, _the Captain's voice encouraged. _Addison, please, just tell the truth. You can't embarrass the family name more than you've already done, _Bizzy told her. In Addison's mind, her mother downed an entire glass of wine afterwards. Had it all not been in her head, Addison would have laughed. Who were these people to be preaching to her about honesty? But Imaginary Captain was right, Addison thought. Leila was going to find out anyway, either it be from Mark, Derek, or one of the gossipy people at the hospital, and Addison would much rather it be from her. Addison can't imagine how Leila would react, if she would even believe her. It wasn't something people just automatically take someone's word for. _What if she hates me? What if she wants nothing to do with me afterwards? _As much as Addison tried to ignore and pretend that her daughter's appearance in the hospital did not affect her, she couldn't deny her incessant longing for the chance to connect with and get to know Leila, to become the mother she'd always wanted to be.

Addison would be lying if she said she'd thought about Leila every single day of her life, but she had never _forgotten _her, nor could she ever forget the feeling of loss, guilt, and devastation that hit her the day social services had come to take her baby away from her. She had made that choice herself, she knew, and she couldn't say that she regretted it, but she had regretted the circumstance that she'd been in when she had brought Leila into the world. Every once in a while after that summer, she'd find herself wishing that the _timing _had been better, and from time to time, she'd wonder what her daughter was doing at the moment. After medical school, after Derek had brought up the subject of having children, thoughts of her daughter and that homeless shelter became more frequent. Derek had grown up in a large family and he'd once told her that he expected to have at least two kids and she had half-heartedly discussed the possibilities with him. She _had _wanted kids. But later that night, when Derek was asleep, she remembered staying awake, staring at the ceiling, haunting thoughts consuming her and realizing that she couldn't bring herself to have another child, because she was undeserving, because she couldn't bring herself to think of any other baby name but _Leila,_ and because she would never get over her first childbirth. She'd dreamt of exactly that, that night, but in her dream, there were complications during labor and the nun cut into her with a rusty knife, slicing her baby and killing her in the process. No anesthesia. No painkiller. She'd woken up screaming. Thankfully, Derek had already left for the hospital. Derek never found out about that, or the IUD she later secretly had implanted.

She had been too scared to tell Derek that she couldn't have kids. It was what he had wanted and she couldn't bear to lose him, or tell him why, because he would never look at her the same way again if he knew. She had been afraid. _Time to man-up, Addison, _she thought as she took a deep breath and placed a slightly trembling hand on Leila's arm, which twitched in surprise. She could feel Mark's eyes on her as she spoke. "Dr. Sloan—Mark—and I knew each other in college. We were, uh, close. We'd flirt and fool around, but overall we had a very… intense friendship going on until it became more than that. At least for me it had," Addison said thoughtfully. "Become more, I mean. I never said it, but I was in love with him. I wasn't sure he felt the same."

Leila found the hand touching mildly strange and uncomfortable, but the doctor—_Addison—_sounded so genuine, and she was finally speaking, telling her things, and though Leila was unsure where the story was headed, or what it had to do with her, she appreciated that Addison was taking the time to explain, to talk to her, when she could be doing other things. Addison's fingers were bony, but her hands were incredibly soft and warm; and the touch felt sincere. _I can get used to this, _she found herself thinking.

"At the beginning of our third year in college—we were doing pre-med, then—I got a car, and a positive pregnancy test. I freaked out, tried to ignore it, did everything as usual: went to class, talked to my friends, studied and pretended that I wasn't scared out of my mind. Finally, I got vitamin supplements, withdrew myself from everyone—I still went to class, but I stopped socializing and studied alone. I never told Mark. Nobody knew. My own _mother_ thought I'd gone to _Europe _during the summer," Addison said, a small smile forming. However, it quickly disappeared when she continued. "When in fact, I was in a Christian shelter for the poor, in New York, where I gave birth to my daughter." She looked Leila straight in the eye when she spoke. "Before I let the social worker take my daughter away, I named her Leila Sierra—Leila, because I'd been a geeky Star Wars fan, and Sierra, after my great-aunt, one of the few people in my family that I have fond memories of. Then, I decided that she should have a part of her father in her name too, so I gave her his last name, which was Sloan. Leila Sierra Sloan, it seemed perfect at the time, like she was. She was the only beautiful thing in that horrible place. I never forgot her name. So imagine my surprise when, after eighteen years, the name—my daughter—shows up on my operating table."

* * *

Hope you enjoyed that! How do you think Leila reacts? Will Mark forgive Addison? What has Derek got to do with everything? ALSO: Chapter 3 of Ordinary World has been posted as well, after tons of _massive _research, so please kindly check it out; very exciting things… all reviews are welcome, they'll make me love you forever! You guys keep me writing, I swear. Thank you. x


	7. Barbie & Ken

"You're joking."

"No, I—I'm…" Addison faltered.

"She's not, Leila."

"I don't believe you." Who were these people? Who was _she _to be coming here and telling her all of this, out of nowhere? _I grew up in New York. _There was no way this woman, whom she'd just met in a freak accident, halfway across the country from _New York, _this woman who was claiming to be her mother, was telling the truth. And _how dare _she joke about this, when she obviously has no idea what it felt like. Leila had given up on the thought of having parents four years ago. She went through years of hell and back just to get over the idea that she was unwanted, orphaned and not good enough. She was done with that insecure bullshit, she'd toughened up, accepted the fact and had gone on with life. She'd learned long ago that life wasn't perfect; it wasn't fair. It wasn't some sort of fairytale where mommy had been kidnapped by the wicked witch and daddy was too busy trying to save her, so that they could come back to be with their little girl. Mommy was the wicked witch that locked her little girl in a house and daddy wasn't the knight in shining armor, he was the one that helped mommy throw away the key. Leila learned in high school that life didn't play by the rules, if it even _had _rules…so she definitely didn't have to as well. She'd done whatever it took to get her what she wanted, no matter how questionable it was. Life was a game of survival and if you were still the doe-eyed girl seeing the world through heart-shaped rainbow glasses, life will tear you apart, bit by bit and set fire to your remains. She was right where she'd expected to be. Well, not in a hospital, but, traveling the country… seeing the world. Before that, she'd finished a three-month internship in New York and had gotten a free ride to Michigan, where she'd volunteered for four weeks. And now this rich, snobby doctor was insisting to be her birth mother. A doctor. Leila had always imaged her parents to be drug addicts, homeless people, or screwed up teenage wrecks. She'd been fairly certain they were dead. But no, her biological mother was a surgeon, dressed head to toe in designer brands that she couldn't even pronounce the names of. And apparently _Ken _was her freakin' father. Her parents were _I Can Be Doctors Barbie & Ken. _It was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard. That was when Leila started laughing.

"Addison!" Mark looked up at the redhead, frantic eyes pleading for her to do something. He didn't know what the hell was going on inside Leila's head, but the maniacal laugh scared the crap out of him.

Addison just stared. She'd expected the disbelief, it was rational, she'd even expected Leila to be furious at her, at the both of them, maybe even cry. She never expected this. The monitor showed that Leila's heart rate was rapidly rising, but the girl just kept on laughing.

"My—parents—are—Ken—doctors—bitchy—Barbie—rich—homeless!" Leila gasped between laughs. She wasn't making sense, but she didn't care. She didn't fucking care. Her hands shot up to cover her mouth, ripping her IV out of her arm in the process, but she'd barely noticed.

Addison pressed the call button, opened the door and shouted for a nurse.

"Shit! Addison, get over here!" He yelled. Blood splattered onto Mark's face as soon as Leila jerked the IV drip out of her veins. Massive amounts of blood was pooling from the drip site and onto the floor and her heart rate was off the roof, causing more blood to gathering onto the ground. He jumped out of his chair, knocking it backwards and grabbed the hospital blanket and pressed it into his daughter's arm. He had to stop the bleeding. It didn't help that Leila had realized what had happened and was now thrashing wildly, crying out in pain.

The blanket had god knows what in it. It wasn't clean. There was a risk of an infection… "Leila!" She ran over to her daughter's bedside, opposite Mark, and grabbed her shoulders, trying to stop her from moving. "Leila, can you hear me? Leila!" Addison raised her voice. She slightly shook her, trying to catch her attention. Eye contact. Anything. She sighed in relief when Leila shuddered and nodded. She spoke again, running her hands through her daughter's hair. "Leila, you need to calm down now… You've ripped out your IV and we're trying to stop the bleeding. If you can be still, we can disinfect the wound and reinsert the tube, okay? It'll only take a few second but you need to hold still, alright?" she soothed. Her daughter's eyes widened and she shook her head. "It's going to be okay. Here, hold my hand." Addison clasped her free hand around the younger girl's and squeezed. This was all her fault.

An intern Mark did not recognize came running in with a nurse. "I need antiseptic wipes and a new catheter—now!" He yelled at them, his hands still pressed hard against his daughter's arm.

"Dr. Sloan, we've got all the equipment here, you can let go of the patient now," Nurse Anna Thompson said. It was nothing she hasn't experience before, a patient ripping out his or her IV drip. Protocol was fairly simple. "We've got it." She nodded to the intern, who snapped on his gloves.

"No, no… you!" Mark shouted, nodding at the intern. "Yes, _you, _you moron. Come hold this. Apply the right amount of pressure…"

"Mark, maybe we could just let them…" Addison bit her lip when the nurse looked at her, her eyebrows raised. Mark's right cheek had blood on it, but he didn't seem to care.

"No! Nobody's touching her!" Mark grabbed some gloves and quickly put them on. "Where are the goddamn wipes?" The nurse handed them over to him.

Addison ran over to the other side, pulling the IV stand back towards the bedside and checked the tubing. She removed all air bubbles and handed it over to Mark just as he'd applied the tourniquet and disinfected the IV site. He'd already applied gauze over the wound.

The intern stood there awkwardly watching the two famous surgeons help each other insert an IV when they could be in an OR. And they say this hospital couldn't get any weirder. The nurse left the room at that point.

Addison watched as Mark removed the catheter from its sterile packaging, chucking the plastic into the intern's direction and held down Leila's arm before inserting the needle into a bulging vein.

Mark shakily tore off the tourniquet and dressed the catheter hub with a bandage. He took the tubing from Addison and inserted it into the hub, finally securing it.

"The flow's good, her heart rate's back to normal," Addison said quietly, bringing the chair towards Mark and gently pushing him down into it. "Thank you," she said to the intern and gave him a pointed look. He nodded and rushed out of the room. She went to stand beside Mark. "Leila?" Addison called uncertainly.

"You're not my mother," she said quietly. The throbbing in her arm was nothing compared to the one in her chest. It was cheesy, but it was true. Her heart ached. She willed herself not to cry.

"I—"

"I never had one."

That was it. Mark started choking as silent tears filled his eyes. He leaned against the bed and buried his face in his hand. He didn't want them to see him cry.

Addison's throat was dry and her eyes watered as she spoke. "Leila… Honey, I realize that I might not deserve to be called your mother after what I did to you, but that doesn't change—the, the facts. I'm sorry, I really am, but everything I said was true. And I'm sorry, Mark, for keeping her away from you, for making the decision on my own. I did what I thought was best for everyone—"

"For _everyone?" _Leila snarled, suddenly sitting up straight. "For you and your _boyfriend_, maybe, but it was not what was best for me. If my life was what was best for me, the worst must really freaking suck. You have no idea—no idea what you put me through. The _horrible condition _of the shelter you speak of, that wasn't so bad for me, because it was all I knew. What was really fucking horrible and _pathetic _was the fact that I _waited _for you for fifteen years, everyday afterschool, _fifteen fucking years. _Yeah, funny right, how it took me that long to accept that nobody was coming for me? Hilarious. And you know why I waited at school? Because the Home _you_ put me in was a nightmare. I shared a room with this crazy bitch of a child that would cry and beat herself just to tell the staff that I hurt her and there was noise every where in that place. So I waited for one of you. Every day on the school steps. Until I was frickin' _fifteen. _Even though it was illogical—how would my parents know where I went to school? But I didn't have an ounce of reason in me because it was all I ever wanted. And then I got over it. Because you don't always get what you want. Then suddenly, out of the freakin' blue, you tell me this sob story about how you _had _to give away your child for adoption because you wanted to become a doctor and didn't want your rich _mommy _in her overpriced clothes and Botox-ridden skin at your _mansion _to be disappointed in you! And you have the balls to tell me you did the best for everyone? If you wanted to win Mother of Year, I suggest your revise your fucking script, _mommy."_

And she'd thought _Derek_ could be really hurtful if he wanted to. Leila's every word seeped with hatred and Addison felt as though she'd been slapped. In any other situation, she would've walked away, but at the moment she felt paralyzed.

Mark looked up, his red eyes staring right at Addison, who was holding onto his chair like her life depended on it. Her face was deathly pale and the expression on her face was one he hadn't seen in a long time. He put his hand on top of hers. "Addie."

"What, are we playing the quiet game again? Whoever speaks first loses?" Leila mocked. "I'm really good at that game though, gotta warn ya. Played a lot of those at the Home. Except at the home, whoever loses gets to spend a night in the Dark Room with the rats and the kids outside would bang on the door all night to try and scare the crap out of you. I got lucky and had my first experience of that when I was five. After that, I got _really good _at the quiet game. You really don't want to play with me. Come on, _mom, _I'll give you another five minutes to rewrite your speech again—how about that?"

He swore Addison looked like she was going to pass out. He turned to his daughter, who had a cruel smile on her face. She looked nothing like the girl he'd been talking to hours ago. "Hey," he placed his hand on her arm, ignoring her glare. "I know you're upset—you have every right to be, I was too when I found out. But you can't say those stuff to her you know? I know you're not a mean person, but those things you said just now…"

"Seriously, dude? What do you even know about me? And how dense or stupid do you have to be to not realize that your girlfriend is fucking _pregnant?_" Leila shot him a scathing look. "And to think people's _lives _depend on you, and that selfish bitch."

"Hey, hey, enough with that! You get to be angry, you get to be all kinds of furious but you're my daughter, and no daughter of mine will speak about her mother that way!" Mark warned, standing up. She's gone too far. What happened to his funny, charming daughter? Who was this vicious girl?

"Yeah, maybe if you'd raised me, you'd have a say in what I say or do."

"You know what," Mark began, raising his voice. He felt a hand on his arm.

"It's okay, Mark. She's right." Addison's voice was barely inaudible when she spoke. She turned to girl on the bed. What kinds of horror had she made her daughter go through? "I'm sorry," she managed to gasp out before turning and running out the door as her tears started to fall. Leila was right. She was selfish, and had unknowingly subjected her own daughter to a terrible childhood and she deserved every ounce of hate that the girl sent her way. She was no better than her own parents, a lot worse than Bizzy had ever been, and the thought tortured her. Ignoring the stares of everyone, Addison found herself headed towards to fire exit and as soon as she got behind the doors, she crumpled to the ground and began to cry. She imagined a five-year-old Leila locked alone in a dark and dusty room at night, scared out of her mind. She imagined an underfed elementary school girl sitting on the school steps until late evening, waiting hopefully for her parents to come pick her up. She pictured a troubled teenager, with a horrible perspective on life, a young adult that craved love and attention and got it from all the wrong sources. Addison hadn't realized that she'd been choking on her own tears until she felt a hand rubbing her back and she gagged, violently vomiting onto the ground.

Mark held his breath as he reached for Addison's hair. They both needed to get out of there, to find someone to clean this mess. And then go away. To the lounge or an on-call room. Hell, even a closet will do. Anywhere away from the rest of this goddamn hospital and its nosy, intrusive occupants. He'd already heard whispering when he'd followed her out of Leila's room.

As if reading his mind, she rasped, "I want to stay here." Even if it reeked of vomit.

"Are you—" God, the smell was nasty.

"Yes."

Okay then. "I'll—I'll get you some water."

He came back later with a bottle of water and two disposable surgical masks and found her curling in a corner, as far away from the small pool of puke as possible—which was not far, given the size of the fire exit. Sitting down next to her, he uncapped the water and handed it to her. She looked like hell. After she was done, he threw a mask in her lap and quickly put his on. _Thank God. _

The corners of her mouth quirked into a smile at that, and she put it on as well. She could almost see Mark grimacing beneath his mask. They sat next to each other, close, but not touching, as she replayed Leila's words in her mind over and over again. _You did the best for you and your _boyfriend _maybe, but it was not what was best for me. You didn't want your rich mommy to be disappointed in you. Selfish bitch. I suggest you revise your fucking script, _mommy. _Selfish bitch. _

"She didn't mean it," he said quietly.

"Doesn't matter. She was right."

"You're not selfish, Addison. You might have a screwed up way of thinking, but you did what you thought was best. You didn't mean to hurt anyone. She'll understand." He hasn't fully forgiven her, but after the verbal beating Addison had gone through, he didn't have the heart to tell her otherwise. He didn't know from whom Leila had inherited her cruelness from, and a lump in his throat formed when he realized she _hadn't _inherited that. It wasn't her. She was brought up in that kind of environment. He thought about her stories of the shelter and felt nauseated.

She wondered if _he _understood. If he could ever forgive her, after what she'd just put him through. She didn't know if Mark was the forgiving type. She didn't know if she deserved his forgiveness or not. She probably didn't. Leila, no matter how cruel her choice of words had been, was right. She was a selfish and terrible mother, putting her future ahead of her child's wellbeing. At least Bizzy had made sure she'd had the essentials of life. She'd outranked her own mother in the World's Worst Mothers list. Addison suddenly felt the urge to vomit again.

"I did, you know," Mark said suddenly.

"What?"

_I never said it, but I was in love with him. I wasn't sure he felt the same._

"Yale. I felt the same."

"Yeah?" She asked softly, turning to him with a tired smile.

"Still do."

* * *

I really hope you guys liked this one. I did! :D Haha. Chapter 4 of Ordinary World is also out, guys, so please kindly check it out. Reviews are greatly appreciated! I love all your speculations and inputs. Dying to hear more. Leila only has a few days left at the hospital before she gets discharged... who do you think approaches her first?


	8. Baby Steps

She cautiously placed her hands on his, cringing when he slowly pulled his hand away. "I—"

"Addison. You know I love you," he interrupted. "I just can't do this right now. It feels wrong. You can't just pull something like this and expect me to instantly take you back into my arms. You have to realize that what you did—what you did was so messed up I can't even—I… It's, it's not just about love anymore." He let out a sigh, feeling his warm breath inside the surgical mask. "I don't even know what we are."

"I told you I was sorry," she said quietly, after a few moments.

"I know that."

"So the bet. It's over," she stated plainly.

"Yeah."

"And us? Are we over? How long until you get over this _betrayal _of mine? How long do I suffer for not telling you?" She demanded, looking up at him. Harsh blue met kind, sympathetic grey, and blue immediately softened.

"Baby steps, Addison, baby steps."

* * *

"Back for more so soon? I gotta give it to you guys. Especially you," the brunette sneered at Addison, almost half-heartedly. At least she tried. Quite frankly, Leila was exhausted. She'd barely slept last night, thoughts of the days' events consuming her. Addison's face when she left the room, Mark's disapproving look. The consistent dripping of the IV didn't help as well. She gave the two doctors her most menacing glare, before continuing. "Either you've got really thick skin or you've licked each other's wounds all better. Or maybe being masochistic is one of your _lovely_ personality traits? You know, along with self-centered, self-righteous, delusional and snobby."

_She doesn't mean it, she doesn't mean it…_Stony-faced, Addison deliberately ignored the girl and walked into the room. She held her head high as she stalked right towards the chairs, on the right of the hospital bed, Mark following right behind.

"And you," Leila exclaimed, her words directed at Mark now. _She's braver than I thought. _"Do you know what the nurses say about you? Rumor has it that you've been around more than herpes. Or was it you that gave everyone and their sisters an STD? I'm getting my gossip _all mixed up,"_ she taunted, but the man just looked bored.

"Shut up," the STD-carrier simply said, moving to sit into the chair next to Addison. She looked up in surprise at his words, but kept quiet.

"What are you doing?" The third person in the room demanded, sitting up in her bed.

Paying no attention to her, both doctors leaned into their chairs comfortably, enjoying each other's company in silence.

"Tell me what you're doing, or get out."

He had the day off. Addison had just finished her rounds and had no surgeries booked that day. They'd agree to pay the foul-mouthed little brat—_their _little brat—a visit. It was a lot easier than he'd expected, choosing to ignore the words he didn't like, and keeping his retorts to a minimum. No wonder his residents and attendings were able to put up with him for so long. And now he was going off topic. "You were in an accident," he carefully began. "You are... hurt. We're giving you... moral support. By physically being here, and not talking." He was so not good at this parenting crap. He looked to his… whatever, his Addison, for help. What do you call a relationship, when you are in love with the person, but hate her at the same time for lying to you for almost twenty years?

"But you can talk, if you want to," Addison quickly added and continued before Leila could say anything. "You don't have to do anything that you don't want to do. You don't even have to talk. Or you can insult us some more if you like. We'll just... Stay here, right, Mark?"

"What?" Leila stared as the male doctored nodded. They seemed almost _relaxed. _Are these people for real? All she wanted to do was sleep, but that was even more impossible now, that _they _were here. "Get out of my room," she ordered.

Mark looked at Addison, cocking his head to the side. She raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips in return. Both of them remained seated.

"What the hell is wrong with you people?"

"We told you—you're hurt and healing. We're staying." Mark answered, putting his hands behind his head and lazily crossing his legs. Addison gave him a pointed look. _Oh, it was rhetorical._ His eyes widened in realization and she nodded, confirming his thoughts, her eyebrows raised in amusement. He shrugged.

Oh, he was making it too easy. "I heard you the first time. Unlike you, _Ken,_ not everyone has to spell everything out twice to me before I get it," Leila snarked. Maybe if she abused them enough, they would leave her alone. She wanted to be alone. She wanted a lot of things. _You can't always get what you want, _a gruff voice inside her head mocked her. _Shut up, Jagger. _

"What's with the Ken and Barbie crap?" Mark asked Addison. She gave him a look again. _That _look. The one with her eyebrows arched and her tongue in her cheek. "What?" He protested. She keeps calling us that. I want to know."

"I thought we weren't going to talk," Leila muttered.

"We said _you _didn't _have_ to talk. But Mark and I can talk. We're talking right here, in your room," Addison turned and told her briefly, before focusing on the man in front of her again. "They're dolls," she explained, watching his brows furrow. "Ken is Barbie's hunky boyfriend. God knows why she keeps referring to us as Barbie and Ken."

"Hunky. I like that."

"Don't you two have work to do?" Leila snapped.

"It's probably a compliment. Barbie's like this perfect thing, and she can be anything she wants… a horse trainer, a model, _a doctor," _Addison continued.

Leila grimaced. "Patients? Dying people?" She said louder.

"You know what, Red? For someone who doesn't want to talk, she seems to _really _want to talk to us," Mark grinned. He knew what Addison was now. She was the mother of his child. That sounded good. Mother of his child. Better than girlfriend. Mother of his daughter.

"I _don't," _Leila protested. They were really getting on her nerves now, though she had to admit that she was flattered they were even spending time with her at al.

"She's even answering to you!" Addison exclaimed in false excitement. The child was getting what she deserved: a pair of really annoying, immature parents. This was becoming quite entertaining. "Hey, what do you want to have for lunch? I heard the food they give our patients here are really gross. I sort of feel bad for them, now that I think about it."

"I was thinking about that pizza place down the block…"

* * *

"Aren't you at least a little bit upset that she never told you?" Meredith asked, pulling on a pair of jeans while her boyfriend brushed his teeth. "I mean, you were the _love of her life."_

The boyfriend spat out bubbles and gurgled before answering. "I don't know," he began thoughtfully.

"_You don't know?" _

"Well, _yeah,_" he rolled his eyes. "We'd talked about having children once, and she'd never mentioned anything, didn't act strange or say anything out of place. She'd seemed perfectly normal." Or maybe, even then, he hadn't paid enough attention, Derek thought guiltily. "Or I was a horrible husband and didn't notice."

"How typical is it that you are blaming yourself, when she obviously deliberately kept it a secret from you," Meredith sighed. "But then again, neither would I."

"Huh?" He walked out of the bathroom.

"Tell you. I wouldn't. I mean, what would I say? _Honey, I'm home, by the way I had a child with your best friend?" _The blonde said, plopping down onto the bed. "I wouldn't even know how to bring it up."

"Huh," Derek said absentmindedly, trying to find a pair of trousers. No matter how hard, it _was _something Addison should've told him when they were together. She had known the ugliest part of him, and had loved him anyway. And he'd thought he knew Addie inside and out—the good, the bad, the awful. How much more did he not know about her?

* * *

Leila watched them converse and banter back and fourth for a while. The whole thing was strange, though not unpleasant. It was surprising. It was the first time anyone has insisted to be in her presence, after she'd pulled a Leila on the person. That was what some of the people at school and at the Home called it. She'd accidentally overheard Dan and Lisa talking to each other one day in the school parking lot. "They said she pulled a Leila on you today, in the middle of homeroom class, is that true?" Dan had asked Lisa. The girl had shrugged. "Don't take it personally, it's what she does. The girl's crazy, everyone knows. First few seconds she's all buddy-buddy and normal, then when things start to get personal, she freaks the fuck out a pulls a Leila." She'd pretended not to hear them. It hurt, but a part of her knew that it was true. Leila had never believed in the saying "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer". She didn't keep anyone close. Sure, she was friendly enough to get by, often times to get what she wanted, and as far as she knew, nobody _hated _her, but she'd always felt uncomfortable about letting any of her friends or boyfriends get too close. It was part of the reason why none of her "serious" relationships have ever worked out. When she begins to love, she either shuts down completely or turns into a maniac, permanently scaring every decent guy away from her. She's aware of what she does, but she's never found a way to stop. Her friends were people she hung out with from time to time, people she laughed and had fun with but she'd never had the "best friend" kind of relationship with anyone. Not that she wasn't doing just fine on her own. But these two were different. Less than twenty four hours ago, she had purposely humiliated the both of them and now here they were, sitting in her room, forcing themselves into her presence albeit not exactly acknowledging her. They were weird. "You guys should leave," Leila said finally. She was a little bit ashamed of herself, a little bit freaked out, and very uncomfortable with their persistence.

"Why? Addie and I like it here," Mark said, giving his daughter a lopsided grin again.

"I don't get close to people. When I start to care, I feel vulnerable and small. Because when you care about someone, the feeling—it's not so different from handing them a gun, and letting them hold it to your head. Caring gives people permission to hurt you. So I try to keep my relationships fun and…shallow. When it becomes important, I lash out. I "pull a Leila", that's what the other kids called it. I push important people out of my lives. It's what I do. I don't know why I do that, I just do, and it works. Lashing out always works. People don't run away fast enough."

The two doctors exchanged glances. So she was finally talking. Opening up. And not verbally abusing either one of them. That itself was odd.

Leila continued. "My social worker eventually gave up on me. Everyone else walked, ran, or crawled away, depending on the damage done. Nobody has ever stayed before." She looked at them, her blue-grey eyes serious. "So why are you both still here?

"Because you can't walk away from family," Mark easily replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

There was a pause, resonating silence as the two doctors stared at the patient on the hospital bed.

Addison held her breath.

"Are you going to yell?" Mark asked bluntly. He couldn't make out the expression on his daughter's face.

"No," the girl finally said softly.

Relieved, Addison let out a long sigh and opened her mouth to speak. "Good," her words sounding final. "Because you're family, whether you like it or not. I'm sorry about what you went through, but I honestly had no idea. Maybe you were right, maybe I was selfish, but I had always thought—no, _hoped_—that you would get adopted and that you'd be raised by good people that were in better position to be better parents than Mark and I." She braced herself for whatever offensive thing that was going to come her way.

However, before the young girl could say anything, Mark spoke. "My parents were shitty at being parents," he admitted. "I can relate to your dark room story more than you'd believe. I wouldn't have wanted you to be stuck with them. I'd have wanted you to be a part of an actual family, with loving parents that didn't leave you alone in the dark."

"Mine were cold," Addison said. "Beautiful and expensive, but cold. Like diamonds. It was hardly a family. I'd like to introduce you to them one day, though, your grandmother and grandfather. I won't lie, you would've been better off with Bizzy than in foster care, but I thought that if you were adopted, you'd get the chance at having a real family, you know? The kind that loves you no matter what, and weren't afraid to show it. I didn't know that things would end up this way."

"I know." It doesn't change what happened, but she could sort of imagine that people just didn't give away their children—not unless they were in a really shitty situation. "You two really are my parents? This isn't a really bad joke?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry, kid. Must suck, having us appear out of nowhere," Mark said in a low, growly voice.

"Okay."

"Okay?" Addison was incredulous. _What kind of answer is that, _okay.

Leila scoffed. "Were you hoping for tears of happiness and the big dramatic hug?"

_Yes._ "No."

"Good, because it's not going to happen," the young girl said, then realized that it sounded quite harsh and tried to smile, probably failing miserably. She would need a mirror to figure that out. She was surprised when Mark laughed.

_Baby steps, Addison, baby steps. _"Okay," Addison said. She would have to accept that.

"Okay," father and daughter said together, nodding in unison.

* * *

What did you think? Good, bad, so-so? :D Reviews are greatly appreciated. If you enjoy some adventure/drama, my other story, Ordinary World, is also updated! I'd appreciate it if you checked it out. Did you know that Fiji was once known as Cannibal Isles?


	9. Mommy & Daddy's Problems

He followed her out of their patient's room, ignoring his interns' stares. "Addison, wait." To his delight, she slowed down and he took three long steps, finally catching up beside her. "You've been avoiding me."

She looked up from her file in surprise. "Avoiding you?" She turned to him quizzically. Why would she be avoiding him? He was the last thing on her mind that day. And the previous day too, now that she was thinking about it. "Why would I be—?"

She seemed genuinely confused, so he cut her off. "Anyway. I was thinking we should have lunch today," he told her. "And talk."

Talk? And he wants to have lunch with _her, _out of all people. "Derek, what are you smoking?" They turned around a corner, to the left wing.

"That was subtle." She was never subtle. He suddenly recalled that time in Columbia, when she blatantly rejected the cocky second year student who'd asked her out on a date, right in front of his friends, and the entire café. Mark's face had almost melted off from laughing so hard. He had almost felt sorry for the poor bastard.

"Stop. Whatever it is you want to talk about," Addison said, stopping in front of the elevators. She was not having lunch with him; she refused to fuel the fire that was Seattle Grace's gossip and she refused to subject herself to the hospital staff's judgmental stares. She had enough going on right now without adding her ex-husband to the mix. "You can say it now."

"It might be better if we talk about it over a meal… like a friendly, non-romantic lunch."

"I already have plans for lunch," she said quickly. She didn't. Mark wasn't talking to her since yesterday, in Leila's room. What does the man want from her anyway? Did he want her to gravel? For her to beg for forgiveness? Food? Sex? He still hasn't told her how long he was going to stay mad at her for. For all she knew, he could be revenge-screwing a nurse right now. She was swaying off topic.

"Oh."

"Yeah, sorry." She didn't already have plans, but she couldmake plans. She'll have lunch with Leila today, Addison decided. A quiet, comfortable lunch with the girl who has finally accepted that she was her daughter. That was better than Derek any day. "So what did you want to talk to me about?" The elevators dinged and the doors sprang open for the both of them to step inside.

"How come you never told me about… you know, when we were married, how come you never mentioned anything?" He said in a low voice, moving closer to her.

About what? About Mark? Or Leila? Assuming he meant both, she replied, her hushed tone matching his. "It was in the past. It had nothing to do with our marriage."

"It was an important part of your past and had everything to do with our marriage. The father of your child being my best friend had everything to do with our marriage," he whispered, growing agitated. Isn't there a better time and place for them to do this? People were starting to stare.

She immediately got out on the next floor with Derek right behind her, even though it wasn't where she'd intended to go. Finding an empty patient room, she pushed the door open and went inside, spinning around as Derek locked the door. "Nobody knew," she said lamely.

"We were in love! We didn't have secrets," he shook his head. "Well at least _I _didn't."

"I couldn't find the right time to tell you." The right time? There was no right time.

"Oh I don't know, maybe _before _we got married?" He exclaimed, then recollected himself before speaking again, his voice more level this time. "Or after. When we talked about having children."

She was quiet, but in her mind were million thoughts, surging, debating whether she should tell him about her nightmares, her IUD, and how he was never there for her. If he had been as in love with her like he was insisting, he would've known, she thought, but ultimately decided against saying that; nothing good would come out of it anyway.

"You _said _you wanted children," he accused. He wanted her to say something, that she had lied about that, that the reason he hadn't known wasn't because he hadn't been paying attention. He wanted her say anything so that he could finally understand everything and stop feeling guilty.

"I did. I did want kids." _More than anything. _Addison _had _wanted a baby with Derek, but a part of her couldn't bear the thought of giving birth again, and coupled with the guilt and self-loathing mentality she'd had at the time—she didn't think she deserved to have another child. It was like wanting what you can't, realistically achieve and just complete mindfuckery that even she can't figure out. So how does she explain all of this to him?

It wasn't the answer he'd wanted to hear. "But you never said you'd already had one."

"No."

"Why not?" He demanded, taking a step closer to her as she sat down on the empty bed.

"Because you wanted kids," she finally said.

"So did you."

"Yes, but I couldn't. I couldn't _have _another child. I wasn't ready."

"Why didn't you just tell me that?"

Why, why, why. Enough with the whys, she wanted to yell at him, even though she knew he had a right to know. She sighed. "What, and kill our marriage faster?" He looked baffled and she looked at him like he was stupid. "You wanted a child. I couldn't give you that. If I'd told you, and told you why, you would have left me faster than I can say intrauterine device." Okay, she wasn't supposed to mention that.

Realization dawned on him and Derek gaped. He didn't even feel angry anymore. "You had an IUD implanted without telling me?" And all that time, he'd thought they were trying for a baby. Wow. Okay. Wow. He sat down in a chair opposite her, defeated.

"I had nightmares of childbirth, Derek," Addison said quietly. "After you'd brought up kids, I'd started having nightmares. I would stay awake thinking, and wake up in the morning screaming." _But you were never there._

And he had never known. How could he have never known? They'd slept in the same bed every night… Derek wracked his mind, trying to come up with possible explanations, and it showed on his face. The room was silent, until she spoke.

"You would leave the house before I wake up."

* * *

"Derek cornered me this morning," she said between bites of her salad.

Leila looked at the redhead, befuddled. Who? They had been quietly eating their own lunches together and she had been almost halfway through with hers when her mother suddenly spoke.

"Dr. Shepherd," Addison clarified, and took a sip of water.

She wouldn't ever forget his handsome face. "Oh the cute one, with curly dark hair?" The girl asked nonchalantly. _Derek, _Leila thought gleefully. Doctor Handsome.

"Yeah," Addison nodded. Casually, she said, "Did I tell you that he was my husband?"

Leila almost spat out her potatoes, but she covered her mouth, eyes frantically searching for a napkin, and started to choke on them instead.

* * *

"Have you seen your mother today?" Mark greeted, barging into Leila's room. The nurse changing her wound dressing looked up in surprise. "Oh!" He stood awkwardly in the doorway until she finished and left the room.

Leila raised her eyebrows. "Have _you_ seen my mother today?" She asked him back, hiding a smile as he went over to the exact chair said mother had been sitting on that afternoon and shot her an irritated look. It was late; most of the hospital staff save for a few lucky souls on nightshift had already gone home.

"Not since this morning," he replied gruffly. _When she suggested we go get coffee and I walked away. _"And you didn't answer my question."

"She told me you were still angry at her."

So she _has _been to see Leila.

"Keep it up, make her pay," the younger brunette continued cheerfully.

"Why?" Mark was taken aback. Isn't the point of children is that they're supposed to make their parents get back together or something? He thought he saw it in a movie once.

Leila pursed her lips. "Because unlike you, I can't _walk away. _And unlike you, I'm a forgiving kind of person. Which sucks, because she doesn't deserve forgiveness. Not yet, anyway."

He was a forgiving kind of person as well. She'd probably gotten that from him, he wanted to say. It had been hard, rejecting Addison today. "So she told you?"

"What, that you'd turned her down today?" She asked, her face turning wry. "Yes. Among _other _things," she muttered under her breath. Her handsome Dr. _Derek _Shepherd. Was there anyone in this hospital that Addison hasn't slept with yet?

"Okay, _spill," _he teased.

"Did you know that I thought Derek Shepherd was cute?"

Mark snorted, then tried to cover it up. Putting on a straight face, he cocked his head sideways, as if trying to think. "He's too old for you," he said finally. _Among other things._

"Yeah, that, and the fact that he's my ex…" she crinkled her nose. "My ex-stepfather."

"Your mother told you that?" He was fully laughing now. He didn't ask if Addison had told her the entire truth about the marriage and what his part was in breaking it up for good.

"_Yes," _she grimaced. "I almost died. Death by potato. _God, _imagine the headlines."

Mark furrowed his eyebrows.

"Don't ask," Leila said flatly. "She said he approached her, wanting to _talk."_

Now _that _piqued his interest. He looked at her expectantly.

"_Daddy_ wants to know, doesn't he?" Leila goaded as he rolled his eyes. "Ask her yourself," she declared. "You can stay mad, Mark, but you can't stay silent."

* * *

"Your mother is the most unbelievable, insufferable…God help her if she wasn't your mother—"

What? Leila sat up, dazedly. Someone had switched on the lights. It was morning. Oh God. Mark. He was yelling, his fists clenching on a crumpled brown paper bag. He was sweating like he'd just run a marathon, his face was red—if they were in a cartoon, he would have steam coming out of his ears, and the imaginary thermometer on top of his head would be exploding glass, and mercury all over all her room—and upon closer inspection, he had spilled coffee down his shirt, effectively staining the entire front of it.

"She slept with an intern! My lackey, bottom of the surgical food chain—" Seeing Leila's puzzled look, he cried out, exasperated. "The guy getting my coffee!"

"Your bitch," she nodded, bewildered, trying to digest the information. Her mother had sex with someone. Okay. She rubbed her eyes.

"Yes! My bitch!" He shouted and continued ranting. "She slept with my bitch... Minutes, only _minutes,_ after I'd told her that the bet was off."

Bet? "What be—"

"The goddamn celibacy bet. But that's not the point." Mark flung the paper bag onto the bed. It landed in his daughter's lap.

She grabbed the bag and peered inside. Cinnamon rolls. "And what's the point?" Leila asked calmly, sticking her hands inside the bag.

"Addison, your—_your mother _is the damn point. Your mother is such a—such a—and her standards! She doesn't _have_ any standards... If she did she wouldn't sleep with the guy getting my coffee and dry cleaning!"

"Oh for crying out loud, Mark, you sleep with anything with breasts and a pulse and you basically broke up with me. _We were broken up,"_ Addison shrieked, bursting into the room. How dare he go their _daughter _about this?

"I never said that! I said we would take it slow," he objected. "End the bet. Take it slow," he slowly drew out the words. "Not give you the green light to go ahead and fuck the intern!" He snarled.

Leila's eyes flickered between the two as she chewed on the sugary pastry.

"You said you didn't know what we were, you didn't even give me an answer when I asked you how long you were going to be mad at me for," Addison protested. "You ignored me for two days straight—"

"You know what?" He bellowed. "You're messed up. You were supposed to be trying to make it up to me, not jump on the nearest penis available!"

"Woah, this is getting _way _out of hand," Leila interjected.

"Make it up to you, _really, Mark? _I apologized! You took away your hand! I offered you coffee, lunch _and _dinner. You didn't return any of my calls, avoid me in hallways…"

"So you sleep with _the intern! _Are you trying to get a one up on Derek or something?"

"Really, Mark. You're going to bring _Derek _into this?"

"Two days. _Two days, _Addison. It took you two days to run off to another guy."

"Was he hot?" Leila asked innocently. "The intern. Mark's bitch. Was he worth all this crap?" She went back to her roll when both adults turned to glare at her.

"And an intern, no less," Mark continued.

"You know what?" Addison turned to Leila, throwing up her hands. "Yes, _yes he was hot. _And he doesn't _ignore me _when I talk to him!"

"You didn't talk to him, you had sex with him! In an on-call room, in your workplace," Mark turned to Leila. "This is _not _acceptable behavior, you hear me? When you grow up, you _will not _have sex with random men in your workplace!"

Leila quirked her eyebrows, but nodded.

"He's not a random man I just met, his name's Alex and he's my—"

"Intern, yeah, who gives a fuck?" Mark cut her off.

"Are you angry that she slept with a downgrade, or because she slept with another man?" Leila asked. She fished around inside the paper bag for a tissue. Finding none, she wiped her fingers on the bed sheets instead, before looking up seriously at the two people standing in front of her. One looked ready to throttle the other, the other glaring so intensely that if eyes were daggers, there would be one less person in the room.

"He's just angry that he's finally had a taste of his own medicine," Addison said spitefully. "You sleep with—no, you cheat on everyone with everyone, Mark. God forbid—"

"Hah! I haven't _had _sex in sixty freakin' days. _You, _on the other hand…" he scoffed. "An intern. Really."

"Answer my question," Leila insisted.

"What?" Addison asked, incredulous.

"I wasn't talking to you," Leila told her, ignoring how her mother pursed her lips at that.

"Fine. I'm pissed because I made it through sixty days without sex, proving that I love _her_ enough to wait. I'm pissed that she kept my daughter from me and _then _sleeps with another man after the goddamn sixty days!" Mark shouted. "Which was a stupid idea, by the way. Celibacy equals love? Fuck, that's retarded."

"But you made it through," the daughter said. "You waited. And you're upset that she didn't."

"Yes!" What did this girl want from him? Looking at Addison, who was being unusually quiet, he realized. _Oh. _

Leila broke the silence. "So… are you two going to kiss and make up now?"

"No!" Mark yelled, before Addison could answer, and walked out the door.

Addison pushed Leila's feet away and sat down on the bed with a sigh. She looked at anything but her daughter.

The younger girl nudged Addison with her foot, something she probably wouldn't be able to do, had the woman actually raised her. The woman turned. She had a bizarre look on her face. Leila stared right back. "I guess Mommy's sleeping in the doghouse tonight, then?"

* * *

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	10. Disheveled Handsome

_If you're havin' girl troubles I feel bad for you, son, I've got ninety-nine problems and a bitch ain't one. _He was making mindless small talk with the receptionist about the room service when to their left, the elevators sounded, out walking its single occupant. He caught a flash of red hair and briefly ended the conversation, turned around and walked as fast as he could while still being subtle, towards the door. She'd seen him, he realized, when soft, familiar clicks of her impossibly high heels behind him sped up and turned into frantic clattering as she raced to catch up with him. He intentionally left the doors open for her when he walked out, long swinging strides down to the corner where he stood, searching the streets for an empty cab, mindful of the fact that if one didn't magically appear within thirty seconds, she would reach him in time and he would have to look at her and be forced to remember what she had done as she droned endless apologies. She shouldn't be able to affect him this way; she was just another girl that has fucked him over multiple times, he tried to convince himself, but it was damn near impossible to when it was usually him that does the fucking over. She'd been right on that one. He was finally getting a sip of his own medicine—no, it was being shoved down his throat, against his will—and he couldn't handle the taste. But it wasn't only that, because it was _her, _and not just another girl. Before Mark Sloan had met Addison Montgomery, he had had ninety-nine problems and a bitch wasn't one of them. Not that she was bitch. But that doesn't matter now, does it, when she was making her way towards him, desperate to make amends, but too stubborn to call out his name, and the goddamn cab still hasn't materialized yet. _Oh wait, yes it has. _Mark's eyes lit up when he saw the approaching vehicle and his hands shot out, beckoning the driver towards him. It stopped in front of him the exact same time _she _did, tires screeching, announcing its arrival. He felt her eyes on him as he yanked open the doors. "Seattle Grace Hospital," he said curtly, and quickly got inside when the driver nodded. He was about to close the doors when he felt the handles forcefully tugged away from his hands as the side doors opened and she shouldered her way into _his_ taxi, carefully making sure that her handbag didn't get caught on anything, and slammed the doors shut, leaning back into the seats, unconcerned, blatantly ignoring his steely gaze. _Pushy bitch, _he found himself thinking, turning away before she could catch him staring.

"We live in the same hotel and work in the same hospital, Mark. You can't avoid me forever," Addison announced calmly, breaking the icy silence. The calm, cool, and collected façade was exactly what it was—a façade. In her mind, she had already bitten her lip and chewed the insides of her cheeks enough to die from blood loss. Truth be told, she much preferred the angry, shouting-in-her-face Mark. It was the Mark she expected; he was explosion, he wasn't this one. This one was alien to her, and quite frankly, he scared the crap out of her. She looked straight ahead, not even bothering to turn and look at him—she already knew what she would see, and it hurt. Stony-faced and expressionless hurt more than boiling rage, she had discovered, because fury, no matter how much damage it did, it meant he still cared. Now, two days after the not so stunning performance in Leila's room, she wasn't so sure of that fact—yes, she considered it a fact that Mark cared about her—any longer.

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw her lips quiver but he brushed the thought away. Letting out a breath that fogged the glass windows, he unclenched his hands that he hadn't realized he had been clenching, and finally replied with a level of airiness that matched hers. "I'll find another hotel." He didn't need to look at her to visualize the surprised hurt in her eyes. _Asshole, _someone in the corner of his mind growled but he willed it to shut up, because oddly, it had sounded like his own voice. When the taxi finally parked outside the hospital, he handed the driver a crumpled fifty-dollar bill and quickly got out of the cab, commanding himself not to look back.

* * *

"What, no hollering and cinnamon buns today?" Leila asked, when Mark quietly let himself into her room.

"Yeah, about that…" Mark cringed at the thought. He'd woken his teenage daughter up by screaming about her mother's slutty antics, before having a major fight with said mother, right in front of her, and storming out of the room. It was just the kind of thing that screwed children up, he was sure he had heard somewhere.

"It's okay, I was just teasing," she assured him, propping herself up. Mark's outfit looked like it hasn't been ironed, and his shirt was missing a button. He looked like he'd had a nice roll in the dumpster. Her eyes narrowed.

"How'd you sleep last night?" He remembered that she had sensitive ears and disliked the dripping of the IV. She'd told him once that she would cover her ears with her pillows, just to block the sound. She was a strange kid. He dragged a chair closer to her bedside and sat down with a sigh. He had surgery that morning and wouldn't be able to stay for long.

"Better than you," Leila accused. The man had dark circles under his red eyes, and upon closer inspection, eye gunk and rather unattractive stubble on his normally perfectly groomed face. "Gross," she said, pulling a face as she swiped the dried rheum from the inner corner of her father's eyes with her bare fingers and rubbing it into the hospital bed sheet. She would wash her hands later. "Did you even wash your face this morning?" He was no longer staying with her mother, she deduced. She would never have let him leave the house looking like that.

"Yes," he lied, his cheeks burning from the disgusting but slightly affectionate touch. _This is my daughter._ "And I slept just fine."

"Liar."

"Shut up," he told her. She was young. What does she know?

"You should give her a chance, you know. Or go bang a whore, and make it feel all better."

"Leila Sloan," he warned, but honestly, he was surprised by how accurate she was at describing how he would normally act. _Bang a whore, _he thought, considering the idea. Maybe he should give it a try. He knew from experience that it does actually make everything feel better.

"Or give her a chance," the young girl quickly said, giving him an innocent look.

Is she seriously going to keep on bringing this up?

His distaste was apparent, but she continued anyway. "To explain."

"Explain what? That she'd misinterpreted my words from 'I love you, but you still need to make it up to me' to 'we are done and you may now screw your intern'?" He grimaced, eyes darting to the clock. "I have to go in five minutes."

"So you_ already_ understand that it was miscommunication," Leila pondered. "That's a step, right?"

"Shut up, Leila," he snapped.

"_You _shut up. It _is _a step. The next is to let her apologize and sort this shit out."

"Or I could just bang—" He was cut off by her laughter, which he didn't like. She was laughing _at _him. Nobody laughs at Mark Sloan.

Leila smirked as she spoke, "As if anyone would want you in that unwashed, dirty, homeless look."

"It's called _Disheveled Handsome,"_ he objected.

"No, Mark, it's called _Hobo With AIDS."_

* * *

_I can do this, _she thought to herself as she made her way over to the table at the corner of the cafeteria, where he was sitting alone, picking at pieces of his food. She has done this before. Setting her tray on the table, she turned a deaf ear to the whispers from the surrounding tables, and smiled nervously when he looked up at her with tired eyes. When he didn't say anything, or try to leave, she sat down, daintily unpacking her store-bought lunch. He continued to completely disregard her as he chewed. "How was your day?" She tried, picking up a plastic fork. Simple, but it showed that she cared.

He put his utensils down slowly and turned to face her. She was beautiful, even with the faded lipstick and darkened circles under her eyes that even makeup couldn't conceal, and he hated her for it, for being beautiful. She did not falter under his gaze. "It was fine," he finally answered. "Skin graft, cancer patient."

Concerned, she asked, "On the eight year old? How did it go?" She knew he hated working on children.

"No complications."

_Okay. _"Is the pasta any good?"

She was persistent, that much he respected. "Depends."

Addison looked at him expectantly.

"I lied, it tastes like shit," he deadpanned, as she bit back a laugh.

"I saw on the boards that you were free this afternoon, and I was thinking we could go and see Leila together," she said casually, taking a sip of water to avoid his stare.

"Already saw her this morning," was the brisk reply, before he went back to his pasta. The noodle was too rubbery and the sauce was too bland, but it was the better alternative to making impersonal small talk with _her. _He never thought that they, of all people, would end up sitting together, making uncomfortable conversation about trivial crap like patients and pasta.

_Well, you can see her again, _she thought, but decided against pushing him further, because at least now, he was willingly talking to her. She would take whatever he was willing to give. They ate in silence for a few minutes before she cleared her throat and spoke up again, looking down into her plastic box. "You know I'm sorry, right?" She held her breath and started to panic when he didn't answer. She heard shuffling and looked up to see him gather his food and tray, preparing to leave, and her heart sank. "Mark?"

"I know," he said quietly, getting onto his feet. "I have to go, have a nice day."

_Yeah, nice day._

* * *

As he stood on the balcony, looking down at the busy hospital workers below him, musing over a certain redhead, he felt—no, _smelled—_someone next to him. He was about to tell her to please go away, that he had been hiding from her all day for a reason, when the person spoke, causing him to look up in surprise. After everything, it was the last voice he had expected to hear.

"She screwed up," Derek stated plainly. He didn't know exactly what she did, but he and the rest of the hospital were vaguely aware that something was very wrong between the two. When he had heard that Mark had called Sanders instead of Addison for a consult on his pregnant burn victim, he had decided that it was time to put his own feelings and insecurities aside and do what he can. Dr. Michael Sanders hated Mark, and had made his feelings very clear months ago, so Derek figured that whatever it was, it was bad and so he took it upon himself to help his…friends. They were his friends, he decided, because after all they have been through, all the history and heartache, he had learned a thing or two about Mark and Addison, and he knew them better than anyone else at the hospital.

"Yeah."

"And you're not talking to her," he prodded.

"Yeah."

"You're avoiding her, because if you see her enough times you'll slip and forgive her."

"Yeah."

"You can't even work with her." Derek tried his best not to sound smug.

"Yeah," Mark said, annoyed.

"But you're miserable." _And dirty._

"Yeah."

"Not seeing her makes you miserable."

"Yeah."

"Yeah," Derek sighed.

"After the Leila thing, I told her that I loved her even though I shouldn't, and she goes and fucks someone else two days later." _Happy? _He didn't even care anymore that they were talking about Derek's ex-wife. The same ex-wife he had slept with, when she and Derek were still married.

The neurosurgeon's eyebrows stitched together. It didn't make any sense. "Why?"

_Why? What the hell kind of question is that? _Remembering Leila's words, he answered. "Miscommunication," he said.

"Oh." Silence.

"She thought I meant it was over," he explained. "We had this horrible fight in front of Leila."

He didn't understand. So the two had talked it over; it was clear what had happened, and Derek was willing to bet that Addison had already apologized. So he didn't understand why his friend was still not willing to forgive his ex-wife. He wanted to ask why Mark was making such a big deal about it, since everyone knows that Mark fucks everyone and anyone, anytime, but Derek held his tongue.

Derek had never been good at poker. "I told her I loved her and she responded by fucking Karev!"

* * *

"You look like crap," Leila declared.

"Gee, thanks, honey," Addison said sarcastically, slumping into the chair, but she knew it was somewhat true. The heaviest concealer wasn't enough to hide her under eyes, and there was no makeup to hide defeat and exhaustion, as far as she knew. "I had a rough day."

"You don't say."

Addison rolled her eyes. It was bad enough that Mark was giving her the cold shoulder—and she thought he was the forgiving type—now his daughter, no, _their _daughter, was being a smart ass about it. "How was yours?" She silently willed the girl to change the topic, to rant and distract her about something stupid and entertaining.

She looked at her mother curiously, contemplating telling her about Mark, but upon seeing her reddened nose and bloodshot eyes, Leila realized she was taking it harder than she'd expected. She had been crying. This dysfunctional codependence choo-choo trainwreck that was her parents' relationship was freaking her out. She had no idea it was this bad. There was a lot she didn't know. The young girl decided to draw her mother's attention to brighter topics instead. "Okay, so there's this nurse," she began, grinning, trying her best to conceal her worry. "Apparently her boyfriend—who is also a nurse here, by the way—dumped her by pretending he was _possessed by the Devil."_

"You're joking," Addison stared. No way was anyone in this hospital that crazy.

"No! According to _Pam,_ the guy started seizing in the poor nurse's apartment, threatening to kill her friends and family and put on a show, complete with cackling and maniacal stares for three entire days until she figured out what he was up to and got one of her friends to dress up as a priest and do a fake exorcism," Leila said, sniggering, when Addison snorted and dissolved into laughter. "Okay, okay, and there are rumors of this patient up in psych that tried to chew his arm off the restraints… I heard it was _really _gross…"

* * *

"You slept with Addison?" Meredith hissed, pulling Alex into an on-call room. She'd been on her way to meet Derek at the balcony when she had heard the other dirty mistress' exclamation, finally understanding why Sloan was making her do scut work the past three days, sending her in the opposite direction, on a mission to stop whatever the hell was going on.

"You know what this is going to look like, right?" He smirked down at her. The room was dimly lit but he could see her blushing.

"Do you know that you just about killed your career in plastics by doing that?"

"Come on, Sloan's not the only plastic surgeon in this place." _And I'm not even sure I want to go into plastics. _"And why do you care?"

Because you're my _friend,_ you dumb sack of shit."He's the best. And she has a child! With _him! _You can't just go ahead and _sleep with her!" _Meredith insisted.

"I can sleep with anyone I want!"

"Not _her."_

"What, is this some sort of McDreamy ex-wife thing?" He asked, confused.

"_No!" _Meredith exclaimed. "It's a 'he is an attending, so is she and they can make our lives here very tragic if they are miserable which they are' thing! So whatever you're doing with her, Alex, _stop."_

* * *

"You know, when I first got divorced, I ate a basket of blueberry muffins that my husband's mistress' friend baked, in a drunken, misguided attempt to get really fat," Addison told Leila, laughing at the memories. Things _do _get all sorts of crazy in Seattle. A swift glance at her watch told her that they'd been talking for a little over an hour now, about random and completely outrageous hospital gossip. The girl certainly knew how to take her mind off of things.

Leila watched how Addison's eyes misted over as the room filled with silence. She awkwardly touched the older woman's arm, catching her attention. "He'll come around," she promised.

* * *

He was heading for the bar when Leila's words filled his mind. _"You should give her a chance, you know. Or go bang a whore, and make it feel all better."_ Halting, he hailed a cab back to the hotel instead. He would order room service and hard liquor, Mark decided, and get royally drunk, all alone, and tomorrow, he would show up at work hung-over and puke on Karev's shoes.

Drunkenly knocking on the door to Addison's room at two in the morning hadn't been part of the plan.

* * *

**Thank you for all your kind words and _interesting _comments, feedback mean the world to me. I hope you enjoy this one! Reviews feed the (starving) author! x**


	11. Intoxication & Shipwrecks

Public humiliation, unfortunately, wasn't new to her, especially in this city, but Mark Sloan was definitely bringing it up to a whole different level by waking her—and quite possibly, the entire floor—up in the middle of the night, his knuckles hammering rapidly on her hotel room door to what almost sounded like the beat of London Calling. And he was yelling her name, repeatedly, demanding entrance. _This is not happening. _Addison sprang from her bed and hurriedly threw on a silk robe, her palms hitting the light switch on as she frantically unlocked the door. The smell of whisky, vomit and aftershave hit her like a wave when she pulled the doors open, and she cringed, because _it was definitely happening._ At least he had shut up. Mark's hands desperately clung onto the edges of the doorway, supporting his drunken self. He was still standing up—she had to give him credit for that. She was about to ask what exactly he thought he was doing, when the drunken man, to her horror, happily announced his intentions on his own.

"HeyAddie!" He slurred, words tumbling from his mouth in a rush of barely distinguishable syllables. He poked a finger into her chest, explaining, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Leiaaa said I shud go bang a whore and _you_ were the first one I thought of."

She had never slapped him so hard before, not even during foreplay, and they had mostly liked it _really _rough. The defining slap on his freshly shaven face did nothing to help sober the bastard up, nor did it even startle a conscience into his soul, so she quickly pulled him inside her room and shut the door as he stumbled towards her bed, mumbling her name among other atrocities that she wouldn't dream of repeating in public. Addison leaned against the door and shut her eyes, allowing the back of her head to hit the solid wooden barrier with a sound. Her right palm still stung, but it was nothing compared to the resentment that boiled within her. His demeaning words had hurt, but his audacity made her furious. Mark Sloan, appearing in the middle of the night, calling her a whore—very rich, coming from him—and demanding sex was beyond mortifying. _He's drunk, _Addison reminded herself for the hundredth time. _He doesn't know any better._ It took every ounce of self-control in her not to scream, break or throw something. Her eyes flew open when a loud crash followed by a thud of a body—the son of a bitch—hitting the ground resonated. _No. _"Mark!" Addison ran towards her bed. He'd fallen face-first into the nightstand, bringing the lamp down, shattering the innocent object. He groaned when she pulled on his upper body, finally getting him to sit upright on the floor, against the side of her bed, legs stretched out carelessly. Mindful of the broken glass, she knelt at his side and peered closely at his face and arms for any obvious cuts and injuries. Upon finding none, she stood up just as his arm shot out to grab hers, pulling her down. She yelped as she fell, her shoulder hitting him in his chin, ending up splayed across his lap, her elbows and arms scraped from bracing her fall. Her cheeks burned, and she scrambled to stand, kneeing him in the process. "Mark, get up," she demanded, after failing to pull his weight up and onto her bed.

"Addieeesunnn," he moaned, refusing to budge, his head falling. He looked up at her and gave her a crooked grin, unaware of her hostility. "Addie, I love you."

She shot him a scathing look and sighed, accepting that she would not be sleeping for the rest of the night. She knelt down once again and grabbed his face, gently tapping his cheek. "Mark. Please get up," Addison asked loudly, ignoring his foolish, lopsided smile. "You'll be bruised all over tomorrow morning, get up so you wont be sore as well."

"Addie smell nice."

She sighed. He was obviously not registering anything she said, so she got to her feet and onto the bed and grabbed both his underarms, attempting to pull him up. He was too heavy for her, and she groaned as he continued spouting unintelligible words from the floor. She sat up, trying a new idea. "Mark, let's have sex," she spoke slowly and clearly into his ear, aware of the ridiculousness that was her current predicament.

Drunken bastard or not, Mark definitely understood the word sex. He perked up at her suggestion and grabbed the spinning walls—no, probably floor, because it was fluffy—in order to get up. He had made it to his knees and was carefully rising when he felt two hands pull him backwards. His legs gave out and he yelled, his voice mixing with another one. _Addie's voice, _he thought happily as he fell.

Addison grimaced when Mark's upper half landed on her as he fell backwards, but at least he was on the bed now. She pushed him off her and laid there for a moment, staring at the ceiling while he mumbled into her mattress. Her anger had completely vanished, and replaced with exhaustion as she forced herself not to fall asleep. She got up and flipped Mark over so he wouldn't suffocate, though by that point, she wouldn't have minded if he had. His eyes were closed and he had stopped talking, though his face was still smiling, drool dribbling from his mouth, down his shin and onto—she pursed her lips—her bed sheets. He was bare-chested and barefoot, wearing only the trousers he had worn to work, so she got rid of the belt and that, leaving him in his boxers. She discarded his clothes next to the bathroom door, and went over to the rack to grab a fresh towel. Addison soaked one end of the towel in warm water, squeezed and made her way back to the intoxicated, sleeping man sprawled on her bed and began dabbing at the corners of his mouth, and cleaning his entire face, neck, arms and chest. _This is why I didn't go to nursing school__, _she thought irritably, but did it anyway_. _She dried him with the other end of the towel, before tossing the piece of fabric onto the floor. Too tired to move him to the pillows, she grabbed a pillow near his ass and stuck it under his head instead and reached for the blanket. Because he was sleeping on the wrong side, his feet stuck out from the bed—hers would too, but that was going to have to do. She didn't have the strength, or the will to drag him into the right position. Addison grabbed her phone to check the time and groaned. She had less than four hours of sleep left. She quickly made her way to the door, turned off the lights and made her way back towards the bed, careful to stay on the side that wasn't littered with broken objects and damp towels. She dragged the duvet from off the ground, climbed into bed and pulled it over his body and hers. Curling into a fetal position with her back turned to him, minimally touching his right arm, she quickly fell into deep slumber, never once noticing when in his sleep, out of instinct, the man next to her snuggled closer, wrapped his arm around her and buried his face blissfully into her hair.

* * *

When the alarm on her phone sounded, she groaned, hands blindly searching for the ringing object, her head pounding. She heard a noise coming from someone beside her and she froze as the owner of the noise pulled her body closer to him. _Oh God. _She held her breath and slowly untangled his limbs from hers, careful not to wake him up, before tiptoeing away, grabbing her cellphone from the top of the dressing table and successfully locking herself in the bathroom. She would never come out, she decided, before stripping out of her robes and stepping into the showers.

* * *

He woke up with a massive headache, throbbing pain in his chest and an intensely cold and numbing feeling across his face. His eyes shot open and he shook the icepack off. Looking down, he realized he was half naked. _What the hell… _He instantly sat up, which wasn't a very smart decision, and he clutched at the bedspreads as the black in his eyes slowly faded, leaving him a dizzy state of suffering.

"Lie down and put the ice back on your forehead," she said from the dressing table, looking at him through the mirror. She had called downstairs for the icepack earlier and was now getting ready, eager to leave before he woke up. But _of course, _that could never happen because life had it in for her.

_Well, good morning to you too… Addison? Shit. _"What are you—?" He took in his surroundings. _Fuck._

She laughed bitterly. "Fuck is right," she said dryly, still going about her business.

He hadn't realized he said that out loud. _What the hell am I doing here? _He looked down at himself again. He was in his _boxers._ _Oh. _"Did we—?" He asked, hesitating. He vaguely remembered ending up at her door, before everything was a blur. He grabbed the discarded icepack next to him and held it against his forehead, wincing.

"What, have sex?" She tugged at the curls in her hair.

_She's pissed. We so had sex. _He hoped he hadn't forced himself onto her.

"No!" Addison exclaimed, seething. "Do you _think_ I would sleep with you, after you come bangin' on my door in the middle of the night, drunk out of your mind, slurring degrading insults at me and demanding sex?"

"What?"

"You called me a whore, Mark," she hissed, setting her hairbrush down and turning to face him. He obviously had no memory of what went on last night and the smug bastard immediately jumped to _sex. _"You call me a whore, destroyed my furniture and fell asleep on my bed, after which I cleaned you up, got you warm and tried to catch the few hours of sleep I had left _next to you." Even though you called me a whore. _"And no, I didn't beat you up. You did just fine on your own by falling on my nightstand. _The hotel's _nightstand."

"Which I will pay for," he said quickly. He called her a whore and demanded sex? Shit.

"Of course you will." She fixed her glare on him.

_She doesn't care about the money or the broken furniture. _"Addie, I am so sorry," he began.

She gave him a wry look. "Of course you are." She spun around and started on her make up.

"I had no idea what the hell I was saying or doing, okay? Damn it, Addison!" He flung the icepack at her chair and it landed on the floor next to her.

She didn't even flinch. "Okay," she said coolly.

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

"Do you?"

"Yes. Look, I'll get over it, okay? Lie down," she sighed. He was lucky that none of the glass shards got to him. She picked up the gel icepack and walked over to the bed, where he was still sitting. She gently placed a hand on his shoulders and forcefully pushed him down, slapping the icepack on his forehead, ignoring his cries. "You're pretty much bruised all over. Do you have any surgeries this morning?"

"No," he answered hoarsely.

"Good. I'll tell the Chief you'll be coming in late today." She turned to walk back to the dressing table when he grabbed her hand. "What?" She asked, exasperated.

"Thank you." He let his hand linger on hers for a while, before letting go.

_Oh. _"It's—it's fine."

He watched as she applied her make up on in silence. She'd seemed uncomfortable with him touching her, but he guessed he couldn't blame her, after what had happened. They hadn't had a proper conversation, let alone body contact, in days, which was his fault, since he'd been so intent on being angry at her, and later he shows up at her door, insulting her, and getting into a shitload of trouble, forcing her to care for him. He should've gone to the bar and banged—_Oh. _So _that _was what he'd said to her. Wow. No wonder she was pissed. He laid on his side, pressing the ice to his face, studying her do God knows what to her face until she was satisfied and got up, ready to leave. She'd reached the door when she turned around and looked him straight in the eye.

"I slept with Karev when I thought we were broken up. If that makes me a whore, what do we call you?"

* * *

"So I heard you told your father to go bang a whore," she greeted, a cup of gelato in one hand. She handed it to her daughter, who was finishing her lunch. She plopped down onto the bed. "It's chocolate. I didn't know what flavor you liked," she admitted.

Chocolate is a universally loved flavor, but her favorite was mint chip. "Chocolate's fine, thank you." Leila said politely and laid the ice cream down on the table and took a sip of water. "He didn't actually sleep with—?" She asked, her eyes widening.

"No! God,no," Addison said, letting out a peal of laughter as Leila spooned some ice cream into her mouth. "Is it good?"

"Yeah," the brunette nodded. "So you guys talked?" She asked nonchalantly, masking her hope.

"Not voluntarily," the doctor answered vaguely. "He showed up at my door, drunk." Addison decided to spare the girl from further details of last night's events.

_O-kay. _She quietly finished her ice cream before speaking. "How did _that _go?"

"How did what go?" Mark asked, walking into the room. Spotting Addison, he gaped. "You told her?"

"No!" What did he think she was, some kind of tattletale?

"Tell me what?" Leila quipped. When he got closer, she narrowed her eyes. "Why do you look like you just lost a fist fight?"

"I—"

"Did you do this to him?" Leila accused, looking at Addison.

"No!" Addison frowned when Leila gave her a dirty look. "He fell on a table."

"Did you push him?"

"No!" Both adults said at the same time.

"I was drunk," Mark explained.

"Yeah, I got that part," Leila said flatly.

Addison gave him a look and he continued. "I broke her lamp, she took care of me and we didn't have sex."

"Mark!" She stared at him, incredulous. This was their daughter he was talking to.

He shrugged. "What? It's true. Apparently I wanted to, but we didn't."

"Mark. Stop talking," Addison ordered.

"Fine."

"Fine!"

"She's just angry because I called her a whore."

"Mark," Addison warned as Leila stared.

He continued. "I was smashed. Plastered. _Intoxicated. _I didn't know what I was saying, but she's mad anyway."

"Mark, stop talking."

To his surprise, it was Leila.

"You guys are dysfunctional and screwed up on so many levels, nothing surprises me anymore. I'm kind of glad you didn't raise me, now that I think about it. Seriously, sort your shit out." She leaned back into her bed. It was ironic that she had longed to meet her parents for so long, and now that she had, she wanted nothing to do with them. She didn't want to be a part of this shipwreck of a relationship. Neither of her parents had even bothered to ask what she'd planned on doing after she got out of this hospital. No, they were too busy fucking over each other, fucking other people, and having petty fights to talk about how they were going handle everything and keep in touch after she gets discharged. Wonderful parents they are. "I'm leaving in a week. If you people still haven't killed each other or gotten it together by then, I'm out." She gestured. "Don't want any part in this _thing, _this catastrophe."

* * *

**Hope you guys liked it. Review for more chapters! Hahaha**


	12. Getting Their Shit Together

**Thank you everyone who has read and reviewed, especially those that review religiously, on every single chapter lol. I love you, I do. (hearts) Now. This is where I beg you again, Dear Readers, to please review. Like it, love it, hate it. Tell me everything. I'm interested in your thoughts. Or you can tell me stuff that's completely unrelated to the story. Tell me about your day. Rant about your life problems. I make a very good therapist. Review! **

* * *

"She was right, you know. We _are _a wreck." Of course she was right, Mark thought. She was Addison's kid. Leila had definitely inherited Addison's annoying ability of being habitually right about things, although Addison was certainly lacking that skill in the past week…

"I believe the term she used was _catastrophe_," Addison said wryly, and Mark grumbled. _Before she chased us out of her room. _They were back in the fire exit again. She was sitting on the steps, and Mark was on the ground, slumped against the wall, their bodies perpendicular."I don't know a thing about her," she realized. "My daughter's been here for more than a week and I don't know _anything _about her. I don't know what she wants to study in college, what her hobbies are, what she likes and dislikes… I don't even know her favorite ice-cream flavor."

"You think I know any of that? We've been seeing her every day for at least a week now. How can we not know anything about her?" He looked up at her.

"We know she doesn't like the sound the IV makes."

"The drip?" He snorted. Nobody likes the drip. "How can we not know a damn thing?" He repeated. They've been visiting her. He'd been trying. They'd had a good time together… What went wrong?

"Because we never asked," Addison finally admitted out loud. How was it possible that after thinking about finally meeting her daughter for so long, that when the time came, she _forgot _to ask about the important details of her daughter's life? Leila was right. She and Mark were so screwed up on so many levels. Addison was quiet when she continued. "We never tried to get to know her during all those hospital visits. We were too busy with… other stuff."

_Yeah, with you sleeping with Karev, _he was about to say. Luckily, he held his tongue before the words slipped out. He began to understand. He thought about all the times he had barged into Leila's room, ranting about one thing or another. "We don't know fuck about her because we only talked about our own..." He gestured wildly at the air.

"We've basically been using her as our personal sounding board… _God, we are terrible parents," _Addison groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. The worst part was that she didn't come to realize it on her own. Leila had to _point it out_ to her. She was a terrible mother. In her mind, could distantly hear Bizzy cackling.

"Fuck, we are," Mark swore and started to panic. He was becoming everything he thought he wouldn't. He was becoming his father, the bastard who ignored his kid. "Red, we are godawful parents. What the fuck do we do?"

He could be so crude sometimes. She sighed. "We fix this."

"Get our shit together, that was what Leila said, right? We get our shit together," he declared, his voice loud and confident. Right. Get their shit together. That was what they were going to do. They were going to get their shit together. _Now, how the fuck does one do that?_

* * *

"Where are your goddamn parents?"

"Excuse me?" Leila stared at the African-American midget in a lab coat before her. She was sure that she had seen her before, but she couldn't remember her name. They had only exchanged a few pleasantries between check-ups, after all, and the doctor…was woman. Her brain found it easier to memorize the faces and names of men. Anyhow, she was not "close" with this person, whom had stormed into her room followed by a trail of three other people, like some twisted version of mother duck and her ducklings, so she was taken aback by her choice of vocabulary.

"Drs. Montgomery and Sloan? They _are _your parents?" Miranda Bailey demanded to know, undaunted by the young girl's unwavering stare. She turned to her interns. "O'Malley, if you got your hospital gossip mixed up, I swear to God you won't be seeing the inside of an OR until—"

"They are," Leila interrupted, and the tiny woman snapped her head around.

"You _did not_ just cut me off." She turned to O'Malley again, ignoring Yang and Stevens' stifles of laughter. She was not in the mood for any funny business. "O'Malley—"

"I sort of _did_ cut you off. Sorry, did it again," the young patient said with false cheeriness. "And I'm a patient, not one of your bi—_interns_, Doc, what happened to bedside manners?"

"Sloan's kid, givin' me a lecture on bedside manners," the doctor smirked. She didn't come here to argue with some sassy teenager. She had surgeons to find. She had a patient that had specifically requested for a Dr. Sloan to do her reconstructive surgery, and the Dr. Sloan had just missed his preliminary check-up. An absence of a certain redhead told her that they were together. Find Addison, and she finds Sloan. _All these goddamn people know how to do is cut and screw. Doesn't anyone around here even see patients anymore?_ "I don't have time for this," she muttered. Looking the young brunette in the eye, she asked again. "Where are Montgomery and Sloan? They were here just a few minutes ago."

"I don't know, okay? Stop glaring at me, _Jesus Christ," _Leila exclaimed. The midget was frightening.

"They didn't _tell you _where they went?"

"Dr. Bailey, maybe we should stop harassing her," George interjected. Bailey turned and he immediately wilted under her glare. "Or we can continue to harass her," he said quickly. Cristina sniggered and he elbowed her, causing her to step on his feet in return, when the spawn of Satan and McSteamy spoke.

"They were having an argument, I joined in, and they ran off."

"Great," Bailey muttered. She began to walk out the door, the interns making way for her, when she came to a halt and turned around. "Did I miss something, O'Malley?"

"Dr. Bailey?"

The Nazi rolled her eyes before snarling. "The notice, O'Malley. Did I miss the notice that today was Bring Your Problem To Work Day?"

* * *

"I don't know shit about her, Addison," Mark finally said.

"I know she got into to NYU, but took a gap year instead," the female repeated her ex-husband's words. Addison tried to recall their previous conversations. "I know she likes art." _The Olympic Sculpture Park. _She met Mark's curious eyes. "She told me she wanted to visit the art museum," Addison explained.

"Seriously?" He should take her. No, _they_ should take her. If Leila was even remotely into art in anyway, the artistic gene was definitely from him. Very few people knew the drunken man-whore was also a romantic artist. He liked to joke that he'd chosen his specialty because of his love of double-Ds, but art was one of the reasons he got into aesthetics and plastic surgery. With all the other specialties, once you learn a procedure, it's the same thing over and over again. With plastics, he got to be creative. He'd always liked to draw, but was embarrassed of it as a kid—it wasn't the manliest thing for a boy to be interested in. Now, Mark had fully embraced and appreciated his artistic side. His chosen canvas just happened to be people instead of paper.

"Yeah," she gave a slight smile. Addison, on the other hand, didn't remember ever having a single artistic bone in her body. She was more of the musical type. Growing up, she'd taken, and fairly enjoyed a number of music lessons, from the piano to the violin, to woodwinds like the clarinet. And she liked clothes. Fashion. She liked to think she had good taste. She couldn't draw to save her life—she had gone through that phase once, during her Star Wars years but was never very successful—and was never interested in the whole art gallery and museum scene. That was all Mark.

"We should go."

"Hm?"

"After Bailey discharges her," he explained. "We should go to the art museum—the sculpture park—you, me and Leila."

"That would be nice." It would be perfect, actually, and she was touched that Mark had been the one to suggest it, but it was a week away. And they were nowhere near resolving their own personal conflicts; neither did they have any idea on how to re-approach their daughter and try to make amends.

He could sense her skepticism. "What's on your mind?"

"The fact that we are nowhere near that family trip," the redhead admitted. "I was thinking we could try to get to know her from now on. It would require us to set aside whatever issues we have with one another, be civil, and focus on Leila." _What we should've done a week ago._

"Focus on Leila," he repeated. That sounded good. He could be civil. He was relieved. It was hard to stay mad at her anyway, but Addison didn't need to know that. "I can do that. We should do that."

"At least while we're at the hospital. We can always fight back at the hotel," she said, only half joking.

Mark raised his eyebrows. Did she think there was some kind of mood switch built into people? _Yes, Mark, it's called being mature, _he could almost hear her say and he smirked. He saw her give him an odd look and quickly stopped smirking.

"So, while we're focusing on Leila, I was thinking you should know how she got here." Addison let out a nervous breath.

"What do you mean how she got here—wait, she was in a car accident!" _And I don't even know how, where, or why. Fuck me senseless. _He groaned. He'd never asked. He was so not winning—fuck winning, he won't even be nominated—Father of the Year. "Leila has a car?"

_Here we go. _"Nope."

"Then whose car was she on?"

"A man." Addison had no idea how to tell him. She was positive that Mark wasn't going to take it very well. She took a deep breath. "A thirty, forty-something year old man she met at a gas station."

"_What the hell…" _She has got to be kidding.

"She didn't have sex with him," she said quickly. "Well, it depends on how you define sex," she muttered under her breath.

"_What?" _He cried out in disbelief. His little girl, his sweet—well, not sweet, more like rude and abrasive with a hell of a potty mouth, but she was still _his _little girl…

He'd heard. Damn. _"Anyway," _Addison swiftly changed topics. "The car flipped over. He died. Leila broke the windows and got out. I fixed her abdominal injuries and sewed up her cuts, did the best I could, it probably wouldn't even scar—"

"My daughter did _what _with a stranger?" He interrupted, still hung up on that bit of information. _Dead stranger, _he corrected, feeling somewhat satisfied. Fucking pedophile deserved it. "Addie, we need to put a chastity belt on her! A permanent one, made of iron, or steel with a lock… double locks, triple locks… with an eight-digit passcode or sharp metal teeth, yeah, that would do the trick, no locks needed at all, do you think there's a store that would sell this type of thing? Or we can just get one specially made, we're loaded with cash, Addie, we can do anything. Hell, we can get one made of _gold. _But that would be heavy. We should get it gold-plated instead. Or do you prefer silver? I like gold. It's cocky, shows that we're rich and better than everyone. Man, we can make it diamond-studded! Diamonds look tacky with gold, though, so maybe silver will do. What do you think about getting one made with a trap, maybe with that guillotine thing, you know the one in the story with the king and the princess… that thing would chop off every single horny bastard's p—?"

"Mark!" Addison jumped down from the stairs and hovered over him. He'd been going on and on and not breathing and she was sure he was hyperventilating. "Mark, breathe," she shook him gently and he stopped to take a gulp of fresh air before burrowing his face into her skirt. She held his head in her hand, running fingers through in hair as her other hand rubbed his shoulder in an effort to calm him down. "Okay, breathe in and breathe out. Slowly, Mark."

As he struggled to breathe, fury, disappointment and sadness imploding within him, he couldn't help but think… If this was God's way of making him pay for his whorish ways, God was a major jackass with a twisted sense of humor.

* * *

Screw the fact that she was wearing a skirt. Addison was sitting on the floor, right beside him now, her legs jutting out and crossed at the ankles in an attempt to be decent. Next to her, Mark's head was bent. He was breathing normally although he was a little bit too quiet… She slightly nudged him. "Mark?"

He raised his head to look at her.

"She _is _legal, you know. She's eighteen. If I remember correctly, you were doing those things and more yourself when _you_ were eighteen." Addison bit her lip. She didn't want to justify Leila's actions, but if he could see it from another point of view, it would help him understand and get accept the situation. "So was I."

"I was doing them with you!" He protested, and saw her cheeks reddened as she pursed her lips and fidgeted with the edge of her shirt. "Not with random men I meet at gas stations!"

She cracked a smile at that.

"Seriously, Addison, do you think she has a problem?" He asked, his forehead crinkling, his eyebrows stitching closer together.

"What, like a psychological problem?" Her brows furrowed. "From being in foster care?" She did say she had waited for her parents to come for her…

"Why else do you think she'd be having sex with strangers?" He wasn't trying to make it sound like he blamed her, because he didn't, but it seemed logical.

_I don't know, why did _you _have sex with strangers? _"Hey, hey, I think we might be jumping to conclusions here. Leila never told me she regularlysleeps with strangers."

"I don't care. What eighteen-year-old girl in their right mind would offer sex to a stranger twice her age?" _Apparently, _your _eighteen-year-old._

"She told me that she wanted him to give her a ride." _God, that sounds wrong._

"See, this is why I'm upset that you kept her a secret," he growled. Fuck being civil. "You should have told me. If you had told me about Leila, Addison, I would have _married you._ Bizzy would have pitched a fit and my parents might have cut me off, but I still would have insisted on marrying you anyway. I would've gotten a job, bought you every baby-related book in the bookstore, gone out in the middle of the night to get you whatever stupid pregnancy craving you had. I would have walked you to every single class, beat the shit out of every dumb college student that even looked at you sideways, let you dig your nails into my hand during labor, and, _yes,_ changed diapers and babysat while my friends were out partying_—_I would've done it for you. We would be happy right now, instead of playing this cat and mouse game. You wouldn't be divorced at thirty-eight; Derek would be nothing to you except my best friend. Leila would be happy and loved. She wouldn't be screwed up with questionable morals. She would be polite and virtuous—yes, _virtuous_—and, and a lot less bitter. Our family would be in New York right now, where it wasn't constantly raining—hell, we could be in fucking _Alabama _and I wouldn't care because we would be together!" All three of them, they would be together. She should have told him.


	13. Shit Stirred

"You… you don't know that," she said, finally, and it wasn't unkindly—she didn't intend for her words to be hurtful, she just wanted to add a bit of reason into their argument. She believed that it was true. Everything Mark had said was ideal, it was what everything she liked to have happened, everything she liked hearing, but it was equally, if not more, idealistic, like something out of a utopian romance novel and Addison knew that life didn't work that way. There was no sure way of knowing that they would still be together, had they raised Leila instead of putting her up for adoption. They had been two irresponsible college students, barely adults themselves, full of hopes and dreams that adults didn't dare imagine and no matter how in love they'd been, she couldn't imagine anything good coming from forcing parenthood into that mix. To her, it seemed more likely that they end up not graduating, having to live off their trust funds and becoming horrible parents. After all, it wasn't like any of them had had any good role models in their lives. "Nobody knows what would have happened, Mark," she whispered, when her words were met with silence.

"Yeah," he admitted. "But that's the point. Nobody knows. You never gave us a chance to find out otherwise, you made the decision for the both—no, for the _three _of us, and that, Addison, is kind of fucked up."

"It is." But it wasn't their biggest concern anymore, she reminded herself. Yet _again _they were straying away from the Leila mess, and into their own problems. This wasn't supposed to happen.

"I'm not finished," he cut in. It wasn't harsh, but not exactly gentle. Mark didn't know how to do gentle. It worked, though, and she shut up. "And _then_ you have the nerve to keep it from me for almost two decades. If you had it your way, I would never have found out at all," he scoffed.

"I think we—"

"And then the day comes. Your cover gets blown. And _what do you do? _You screw—pardon the pun—things up even more and sleep with an intern, _that's _what you do," he said dryly. Ignoring her protests, he continued. "And as much as I want to grab Leila and run across the country, I can't, because I can't bring myself to deprive the girl of anymore love. She deserves to have a mother. She deserves everything in the world, and more. As much as I want to hate you, and I'm torn because I already kinda do—it's driving me crazy—I can't because _fuck you, _I love you too much."

She stayed silent, because he's just going to cut her off again, because no matter what anyone says, she _does _learn.

"I never said it, but I loved you then, and I love you now. So even though you're making it pretty damn hard to, I fucking love you, you infuriating, impossible, morally confused, hot mess of a person, so we're going to work it out. Not only the Leila thing but the "Us" thing. There's going to be an "Us" someday, you and me. And_ it's not a question," _he added, not looking at her. As far as he knew, he was talking to the wall. "Now I'm finished," he concluded, quite pathetically, if he said so himself.

So he was asking, uh, demanding to try again. She wasn't even surprised; it was how they worked. One step forward, three _leaps_ back. But at least he was willing to commit. And he _loves _her. He kind of hates her, but he loves her just the same. It was sort of a lot to take in at once, so she simply inhaled and exhaled. Inhale, exhale, and repeat.

Great, so he'd just poured his heart and soul out onto the cold concrete floors for her and she was unresponsive. Fucking great. He nudged her. "So… you were saying?"

_Was I saying something? What was I— _"I… I'd like that," Addison breathed, slightly tilting her head up so that her eyes met his. "An "Us" someday."

It wasn't exactly an "I love you too and I can't live without you so thank you for taking me back", but it was good enough for him, so he quirked an eyebrow and held out a hand, a wolfish grin appearing on his face when she took it. "Let's get out of here and never come back again." What he really meant was let's never fuck up to the point where we end up hiding from the hospital, in a fire exit, ever again, the fire exit being a metaphor for all their less than pleasant situations; from messy fights to desperate, guilty confessions. What he wanted to say was please be honest with him, from now on, that it was going to be okay—that _they _were going to be okay.

She understood more than he thought she did. They rose together. "Come on, we have a daughter to meet."

* * *

He was stuck changing bandages and medication. He went to medical school and managed to score a surgical internship at one of the best hospitals in the country and he was stuck changing some brat's bandages like some nurse. He had nothing against nurses; really, he respected their chosen profession. Okay, so he doesn't. But he doesn't _have _a problem with nurses, especially not cute ones. It just wasn't _his _chosen profession, and even if the patient happens to be the offspring of two of the best surgeons in the hospital, he didn't think it should qualify her for any special privileges, nor should it even occur to his resident to put him on freaking nurse duty. Alex Karev was pissed. And had apparently pressed onto the gauze too hard.

"Ow!" Leila flinched and squirmed.

"Sorry!"

"_Jesus, _you're about as gentle as a brick to the face," she snarled.

"That's because I went to med school, not nursing school," he muttered under his breath.

"Really? So you're _not _a nurse? I wouldn't have guessed," Leila taunted.

He rolled his eyes. "Whatever, kid."

"Hey, so does that make you one of the _interns?" _She asked casually. _My father's bitches, _she thought to herself amusedly.

"Yeah, I am, why?" He chucked the old gauze into the contaminated wastebasket and gestured to her head.

"Nothing," she shrugged, wincing as the intern pulled at the bandage wrapped around her head. She held her breath as he did his thing. Whatever it was, it hurt. "So," she began, trying to take her mind off things. "What did you say your name was?" He _was _kind of cute, up close, though he had a lazy eye and was too drunk and sleazy looking for her taste.

"I didn't," he stated bluntly, giving her an odd look. "It's Karev. Alex Karev," he said after a few moments.

She blinked. "Huh." _His name's Alex and he's my—intern, yeah, who gives a fuck? His name's Alex. Alex. _Mark and Addison's argument replayed in her mind.

He mistook her as confused. "Alex Karev," he repeated, slowly. Did she hit her head hard or something? _Please don't have an aneurism, right now. _Shepherd had better been thorough; he didn't really want to give Sloan another reason to murder him.

_Jesus Christ, she _has _slept with the entire hospital._

* * *

They walked out of the fire exit, hand in hand, and literally into Derek, causing Addison to spring back and the both of them to let go of each other's hands. It was stupid, they had nothing to be guilty about, not anymore, Mark thought, but he was nervous nonetheless.

"Bailey's looking for you," was the neurosurgeon's only acknowledgement of them, before he walking away.

She didn't remember making any plans with Miranda, nor was she ever paged for any emergency surgery or delivery. "Who? Derek," Addison called after him, but her ex-husband was too immersed into his files to notice. That, or he was intentionally ignoring her. He had never even told them where the resident was. _Typical Derek,_ she thought, he was always caring as much as was appropriate, but not giving enough shit about anything that didn't concern him.

"Shit."

Addison gave him a questioning look.

"What time is it?" He asked her, searching his pockets for his missing pager.

She glanced at her watch. "It's a quarter to three, Mark," she replied, raising her eyebrows at the panicked expression that swept across his face.

"_Shit," _he swore. "Bailey's going to kill me. Walk with me," he told her, starting towards where Derek had gone. Her strides immediately quickened to meet his. "I told her I'd meet with her patient… forty-five minutes go," he explained. "I lost my pager, and completely forgot." He gave himself a mental beating. He imagined it was nothing compared to Miranda Bailey's wrath. The tiny woman scared the crap out of him.

His fear was evident, and Addison had to bite her lip to stop herself from smiling as they rounded the corner. "You do know that Miranda wont actually kill you, right?"

"Yeah, but she'll make me wish I was dead."

She laughed. "She's not that scary, Mark."

"She scares me," he insisted. It was the glare, he decided. And that tone of voice that shriveled his dick and squeezed his heart into a crumpled, bloody mess of tissue and muscle.

* * *

"You slept with my mother!"

"What?" He pulled back. Okay, _shit, _he wasn't expecting her to know that. _What the hell…_

"Oh my God," Leila pointed a finger at the doctor. "You're my father's _bitch!_ You got him coffee and dry cleaning and then—"

"Wait, wait, _what?" _He was nobody's bitch.

"You slept with _Addison!_ In this hospital! _Steps_ away from my bed!" She exclaimed, eyes rounding, growing larger by the second. "Even though you _knew _they had a thing. God, you must have known. You were getting Mark coffee! Oh my God."

He pushed his down into her bed. "Okay, first off, I'm _not _your father's bitch. Second, it wasn't _steps away from your bed. _I don't think it's even _on _the same floor, so get your damn facts straight. Thirdly, _Addison _pushed me into the room. She didn't seem to care about her thing with Sloan then," he half smirked at that, but quickly turned serious when he saw the girl glaring daggers at him. "You know what, let's get this over with. I don't have time for this shit."

"You are _not _touching me," she said flatly.

"I _have _been touching you, a half an hour ago."

"That was before I knew you slept with my mother!"

"Your mother slept with _me."_ _Wait, what?_

"_Seriously?"_

He raised both hands. "Look, we're almost done. Believe me when I say I don't want to be here, at all, so why don't you just let me continue and then we can leave each other alone, alright?"

She stared. "Alright," she said finally, and he took a step closer and continued cleaning her wound. She held her breath as he re-bandaged her head.

"Leila Sloan?" A voice interrupted as the doors to the room opened.

Alex turned.

"Yes?" She gave the intruder a wary look. Startled, she sat up straighter when he showed her his badge.

"You are under arrest. You will remain hospitalized, under supervision, until your physician authorizes your release, in which you will be taken into custody for interrogation," the police officer said, cuffing the suspect's right hand to her hospital bed. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in—"

_You have got to be kidding me. _"Wait! This is crazy," Leila interjected, pulling against the metal restraints. "_What_ exactly am I being arrested for?"

"Manslaughter."

Alex jumped, and anxiously backed away from Satan and McSteamy's spawn, eyes darting between the officer and the girl in handcuffs. So she was slightly bitchy and insane, like he would imagine any child of Sloan and Montgomery to be, but he'd never thought she was dangerous. _She _killed _someone? What the hell… And she just found out I screwed her mom, oh my God, shit, shit._

"But that's crazy…" Leila trailed off, as the officer walked over to cuff her other hand. She turned to the asshole of an intern, who for some reason, has yet to leave the room. "Alex, right?" Leila asked shakily. He gave a slight nod. "I'm sorry. Please find—"

"I'll get them," he assured her before quickly heading towards the door. _This is not good. _Today was not his day, he decided, cursing whatever higher being above that put him in this position. He was going to have to break the goddamn news to goddamn Montgomery and Sloan. If they didn't simultaneously go into cardiac arrest, making him responsible for the deaths of two of the hospital's highest-worth doctors, one of them was bound to verbally beat the shit out of him so bad he would be begging to work in The Pit. _This is bad._

"Wait!"

Alex stopped and spun around. He nervously eyed Leila and the officer, who has moved to stand next to him at the door.

"Tell Addison to call a lawyer, I didn't do this."

* * *

**Review for cookies, chocolate and more chapters! xx**


	14. War Plan

**LoveandLearn, you win most observant award today. Yes, I've merged two of my chapters. Thank you all kind reviews & readers. Feedback is wonderful. Please, tell me more. And tell me what you thinking about the *spoiler* sex. I tried not to be too explicit, I didn't want to change the rating and I have no idea how to write smut. Please bear with me. And *do* tell me what you think of this one. It's the longest chapter by far. Good, bad, awful? Like it, love it? Utterly hate it? Details, guys!**

* * *

"Miss Sloan, where were you between midnight to 1 A.M. on Sunday, April 15th, 2007?"

She stared. When was he going to stop? Her being interrogated like some goddamn criminal, this was crazy. She didn't kill anyone… did she? The guy had basically told her nothing, and she didn't want to ask. She didn't want to give him more reason to think she was guilty, so she'd done the impossible and kept her mouth shut. _Where the hell are Mark and Addison?_

* * *

"Are you sure you don't want to clear things up with Miranda first?" She said between gasps. They were in the on-call room. This was not good. This was why riding on crowded elevators was not a good idea; why pressing against a sexually deprived was a completely bad idea. _But it feels so good; _she inhaled sharply when his breath prickled on her exposed neck as he spoke.

"She's already going to kill me, might as well make dying worth it," he mumbled into the crook of her neck before kissing the area, moving his way downwards. One hand pinning hers above her head, his other hand fumbled at his belt buckle. He yanked her shirt open, ignoring her protests, because _yes, _he knew it was expensive but fuck if he cared. He'd buy her a million shirts if he could tear them off her later. His mouth went back to her ivory throat while he thumbed _that _spot on top of her bra before sneaking a hand inside, her tiny moans like music to his ears, encouraging him.

His touch on her skin felt like fire. She flushed, a sensation of warmth gracing her face, neck and chest as she felt his hand roam from her thighs up to her hipbone, his thumb gracing the center of her panties before swiftly pulling them down by the edges. Her eyelids fluttered close as he groaned, his voice mixing with hers. The thing he was doing with his hand and mouth—she didn't know what he was doing anymore, hell, she didn't even know her own name.

"Open your eyes, Addie." Their lips crashed against one another's as he watched her eyes flew open, wild blue meeting smoldering grey.

* * *

"Miss Leila Sloan?" The officer tapped his pen against his notepad, looking up at the young girl.

Her jaws clenched. If she wasn't being restrained, she would be leaping towards the smug bastard and mauling his face within seconds, her injuries be damned. "I thought you said I had the right to remain silent," she demanded.

"I did." That didn't mean he had to stop asking questions. If grilled hard enough, suspects usually answer anyway. Case closed. "What were you doing on Sunday night?"

"Dude, I haven't been answering any of your questions for the past thirty minutes, take a hint."

He merely raised his eyebrows. "Now, before you were admitted to this hospital, you were—"

"I am invoking my right to remain silent,_ starting now," _Leila snarled. How does one tell a cop to shut the fuck up? She didn't bother to fight against the metal restraints; she knew it was useless. Now why were her parents taking so long? Actually, they could take as long as they want; she just hoped Addison had a damn good lawyer.

* * *

"You people teach us how to do surgery but you can't lock a simple door?" He was truly and thoroughly disgusted. They were attendings, and almost twice his age. Not that Montgomery's age had been a problem for him last week, because it hadn't. _Man, _she still got it. Sloan's muscly, flexing ass and hairy thighs, however, was not as sexy, even with Montgomery's long, shapely legs and sky-high heels wrapped around his waist.

Addison froze at the sound of his voice. _This isn't happening, _she thought, all feelings of arousal vanishing. She just wished she could physically disappear along with it_. _Addison closed her eyes and threw her head back. Of all people, it had to be Karev. _Fantastic._

"Karev!" Mark boomed, turning his head around to look at the intern. "Just the person I wanted to see," he quipped, sarcasm dripping from every word. "If you were interested in a threesome you could've just asked instead of fucking my girlfriend." Said girlfriend—or something—clenched her walls around him and he gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to thrust. _I'm still inside her. Shit. _

"Mark!" Mortified, Addison pushed him off, straightened her skirt and buttoned her blouse as Mark unashamedly pulled up his pants and began fixing his belt buckle.

"Or you could get the hell out," he snapped. Of all people that had to walk in on them, of course it had to be Karev, biggest turn-off in years. He looked at Addison, who was pulling the edge of her skirt down from her waist. He realized her panties were still in his hand, and she was giving him a pointed look. He wondered how she was going to put them on without giving the intern a show. "Privacy, Karev, _get the hell out,"_ he repeated, annoyed. He didn't bother to look at the intern. Did the little bitch have any decency? _If he did, he would have shut the door and left five minutes ago. _Why the hell hasn't he left?"Are you jacking off?"

"Dude, seriously? Your daughter's getting arrested for—no, screw that, she's already in freakin' cuffs—now, _come on!" _The intern yelled and rushed towards the door, beckoning for the two attendings to follow him. "Dr. Montgomery. Addison." Alex stopped and spun around to look at the slack-jawed doctor. "She said to call a lawyer, she didn't do it." He swung the door open and was about to run out when a hand roughly grabbed him by the shoulders. _Fuck. _He winced.

"What didn't she do?" Mark asked in a low, composed voice, when Karev swiveled his head around. His heart was beating erratically in his chest; he swore he could hear it echoing in the room, but he refused to show Karev that he was panicked, scared—no, terrified.

Addison looked down to make sure she was half-decent before getting up on her feet.

The steely glare was unsettling, as was the sudden grab. He didn't deserve this; he was just the messenger. Did nobody ever tell Sloan that he shouldn't _shoot the fucking messenger?_ Or more accurately, don't forcefully seize, twist, and quite possible dislocate the messenger's shoulder? "She, uh," He hesitated for a second too long.

"Karev?" Addison urged, the grip she had on the bedpost turning her knuckles a deathly shade of white, matching the color—or lack of a color—on her stricken face.

Alex felt a pang of sympathy for her, and feared how she would react upon the knowledge that her daughter was being accused of murder. _Manslaughter, _he reminded himself, but it wasn't like it would feel any different. _Damn it. _

"Karev, _what didn't she do?" _Mark asked warningly, tightening his hold on the younger man's shoulder and giving what he meant to be a slight tug.

It didn't feel like a slight tug, and the intern forcefully shoved his attending backwards, releasing himself of Sloan's grip. He wasn't going to tolerate being _manhandled _by his fucking attending. He shouldn't have to deal with this shit. "She killed someone, okay?" Alex spat out angrily, looking directly into the older man's shell-shocked eyes. "Oh my God," he heard Addison cry out, and his fleeting moment of confidence was quickly replaced by nervousness. "Well, the cop _said_ she killed someone," he faltered, sweat dripping down his face.

"Leila is being charged with _murder?" _Mark finally exclaimed, staggering backwards in incredulity and surprise. His arms hung limply at his side. Karev had said arrested, so they must really think she'd done it. He tried to tell himself that she probably had a good reason to, that she was a straight kid with a good heart. His heart broke at the thought of someone hurting his daughter badly enough for her to kill that person. _What the hell did she go through? What the hell did she _do? _I don't know a single thing about her. Oh my God she killed someone._

"Manslaughter," Alex hastily corrected. "Now, you _have _to come with me."

"Is there a difference?" Leila killed someone. _Fuck._ _"Goddamnit!" _He yelled, pushing the first thing in his line of vision, which happened to be chair, onto the ground with a crash.

"There _is, _Mark!" Addison shouted, rushing to his side. Lack of intent was a huge difference. _Mens rea, guilty mind,_ she recalled the text from some J.D. prep book from the time she was convinced she wanted to become a lawyer. An involuntary killing conviction was a whole different thing to _murder._ _Oh my God, oh my God. _"Mark, I am calling Savvy." She fumbled for her phone, her pulse racing. "You have to calm down!"

_Calm. I have to calm down. Breathe in. Out._

"You two really have to go see her, right now," Alex interjected before the plastic surgeon could reply. _The girl is in _handcuffs_ for God's sake._ _She's probably scared out of her mind. _He thought about the time he had been arrested. Back then, although he'd been young, his crime was petty theft, not freakin' _manslaughter. _And Leila was eighteen, which meant she could be tried as an adult. Shit, that was terrifying. He could only imagine how she was feeling. "Come on, man, she asked for you."

Mark snapped back to reality. "Addison, let's go," he said turning. She could make the call while walking. He nudged her, slipping her panties into her coat pocket.

Her cheeks burned. "I'll make the call on the way," she agreed, as if she were reading his mind.

He nodded, and started walking. Karev had already run off. _On another thought… _He came to a halt at the door, causing her to walk into him. He muttered an apology before speaking. "Addison, are you sure you want to call Savvy?"

"Savvy is a brilliant criminal defense attorney, Mark, and she's someone I trust. Someone _we _trust." She had an inkling of where the conversation was going and she didn't like it one bit.

Mark spun around around."Addie, no offense, but Savannah does _fraud _cases." Savvy was also his friend, and he understood why Addison would like her to handle the case, but the woman specializes in fraud and embezzlement and he wanted the best for Leila.

"It's a niche. That doesn't mean she can't deal with all types of criminal charges." She narrowed her eyes. _There's no reason not to just get it over with. _"Who do _you_ suggest we call?" She asked. She already had an idea; she just hoped she was wrong.

Mark wasn't suggesting anything, it was already decided. "I'm calling Bill." Eyes flashing, he silently dared her to argue.

The conversation was exactly where she didn't want it to go. "There's no way William Beck is flying to Seattle for this," she argued feebly. He would come. High-profile case or not, she was sure he would come. Oh, the son of a bitch would _love _to come.

"I'm calling Bill, Addie."

"He is an _ass!"_ She would never jeopardize Leila over a grudge; she just had to make it clear to him where she stood on this.

"He's kind of a bastard, Addison, but he's the best, and he's my friend. I'm calling him."

"I'm calling Savvy." She rushed past him, her fingers already dialing on her keypad.

He walked briskly to catch up. "What for?" The last time he spoke to Savvy, she was in the middle of some big-name money-laundering case. Manslaughter just isn't her kind of thing, she was too nice, too pretty to evoke terror in court; this, this screams Bill, and Addie knew it. Six foot three and even more intimidating once he opened his mouth, he was one of those cutthroat lawyers you don't want to see across the aisles. 'Career suicide' was the term a journalist had used to describe a young prosecutor going up against Bill in 2001.

"A second opinion, Mark," she replied, rounding the corner. _And moral support_, she thought. She needed someone she trusted, someone on her side in this, and someone to vent to. 'Bill' was a five-star bastard whom Mark had befriended and to her distaste, fan-girled, throughout college. If he was going to be representing her daughter, she might as well ask Savvy to bring some booze as well.

* * *

"Hey, stranger," she teased. It's been way too long since she'd heard from her best friend.

"Leila's in trouble. I need you."

The urgency in Addie's voice sparked concern into her, but she was confused. "Leila? Who's… Oh my God! You _found _her? Sweetie, how did you—?" She began excitedly before she was cut off.

"Savvy, she's been arrested for _manslaughter."_

"What? Hang on. It's six here. I have to tell Weiss I won't be able to make it for dinner. I'll be there in five hours."

* * *

"Come on, pick up…" He muttered. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if the man was even _in _the country.

"Please tell me you didn't fuck some actor's face up and got yourself a lawsuit.," he drawled. He was only partially joking. The hate fan mail that bombarded his office in 2004 from defending a client in a similar case almost ruined his life.

"Bill!" Mark laughed. He has never been happier to hear a man's voice.

"So you _are _being sued?"

Mark could almost hear his old friend's eyebrows arching expectantly. "No!" He exclaimed. "Bill, I, uh, I have an eighteen-year-old daughter." He paused, allowing time for that to sink in and braced himself for the laughter that he was sure would follow. He was right. He pursed his lips at the older man's snort, before coughing loudly.

"Wait a second… She's already eighteen. You're not _still_ paying child support, are you?" He didn't know what the problem was. If he was trying to save himself some money, Mark Sloan has called him about eighteen years too late.

"No, no, that's not…" He trailed off. God, Bill thought he was trying to get out of paying _child support? _What the hell… Did he give off that kind of impression? "She's being arrested. She was in a car accident. She wasn't even _driving _but they said she _killed_ someone_. _God. Actually, I don't even know if it's even related to the accident, but Bill, my daughter's in trouble." He was speaking faster than he normally spoke, and didn't care whether the entire hospital heard him or not.

_Well, shit._ "I don't cost twenty bucks, kid," William Beck joked.

"I'm rich."

"You still in New York?"

"Seattle," Mark answered, relieved. "Seattle Grace Hospital."

His meeting could wait. "Good, same time zone. See you in three hours."

* * *

"You told _Savvy _about Leila?" _And not me, _he thought silently, crinkling his nose and impatiently drumming his fingers on the elevator doors.

"I was drunk," she said plainly. "How did Bill take it?"

"Thought it was hilarious. He'll be here in three hours. Savvy?"

The elevator dinged and they both stepped out. "Five. Bill's not in New York?"

"No. Is Weiss coming?" He missed that guy.

"No. Hey, does Bill know that I'm here?"

"No. He doesn't know that you're, you know…" He trailed off. "Make nice, Addison."

"I will if he gets Leila off the hook." When they reached the door, Addison let her hand linger on the doorknob and turned around. "Not a word, Mark," she warned, looking into his eyes. She was blushing but she didn't care_, _as long as Leila never hears a word of what had happened in the on-call room.

"Not a word," he promised, as she pushed the door open and stalked into the room. He followed her, stony-faced, slightly puffing his chest in an attempt to seem daunting though he himself was scared out of his mind. He had to be strong for Leila. Addison seemed to be doing the same, he noticed, when he moved to stand beside her, next to Leila's hospital bed.

"I'm Officer John Kelly, and you are?"

She kept her look icy when she spoke to the police officer. He had stood up from his chair when she and Mark had barged into the room. "Dr. Addison Forbes-Montgomery. I'm Leila's mother."

"I'm her dad." Mark ruffled Leila's hair and took her hand, pleased that she didn't pull away. He choked up at the sight of her in metal handcuffs and had to will himself to stay calm.

"I don't understand… according to our records, Miss Sloan has been in the care of the state since she was born," the officer said, narrowing his eyes. Have these people been helping her hide?

"They're my biological parents," Leila explained. Mark squeezed her hand, and she felt infinitely grateful. It was a strange feeling, someone—or two—be there for you, and she has yet to get used to it, but she appreciated the fact that they even bothered to come, and were being civil nonetheless. It was nice to see them not yelling at each other.

"It's a long story," Mark told the confused cop.

"One that we don't want to share with you."

"Go, Addison!"Leila grinned.

"Our lawyers will be here in less than six hours," Addison continued coolly, trying her best not to smile, to keep her face indifferent. She looked down her nose at the cop, not bothering to mask her distaste when she spoke, though she realized it sounded way too similar to Bizzy's airy tone for her liking. "Is there any way you can get my daughter out of these… _restraints?"_

* * *

"Your ex-wife and ex-best friend's child is handcuffed to her bed and there is a police officer in front of her room," Meredith said levelly when he walked into her locker room. Beside her, she heard Alex groan something along the lines of 'can't keep your goddamn mouth shut', but she ignored him and looked up at her boyfriend.

"You're serious." The boyfriend stared. He knew it wasn't any of his business, but Mark wasn't just his ex-best friend and Addison wasn't just his ex-wife. They had history together, and no matter everything that had gone wrong, he'll be damned if he let them go through that without him. He walked up to his girlfriend and gave her a kiss on the forehead. "Mer, I'll see you at home."

She watched him run off.

* * *

"I figured you'd probably be up all night, so I, uh—"

"You brought us coffee," Addison finished for him, standing up, a large smile on her face. She and Mark had been sitting side by side, trying to ask Leila if she could explain what was going on, and trying to reassure her that everything was going to be alright, that they'd called two of the best lawyers out here for her, that they were _here. _She gave her ex-husband a hug, breathing in his scent. "I'm glad you're here," she whispered.

"So the whole hospital knows now, huh?" Leila asked, sighing loudly, causing Mark to squeeze her hand again. Did he think he was being comforting? The hand squeezing was getting old, but she let him anyway.

"Tell me you brought food," Mark said, his stomach growling as Derek handed him his cup. The neurosurgeon gave him an apologetic look. "Come on man, a cookie, muffin… anything?"

"How does cheap, artery-clogging rubber sound?" Another man said cheerfully, announcing his presence.

Derek and Addison turned around, taking in the sight of an extremely tall man in a suit and tie; his greying hair slicked back, his impeccable formal attire contrasted by the large, greasy plastic bag in his hand.

"Montgomery?" The man gaped. The woman grimaced and looked like she wanted to disappear. He stared at the young girl on the bed, and back at Addison. _Huh. _He held his tongue. Bill didn't recognize the other man.

"Bill Beck!" Mark bellowed a greeting, getting to his feet.

"Hey, kid."

"Derek Shepherd," Derek said, giving the stranger a firm handshake as Addison took the bag from him. "And you are?"

"I'm the lawyer that's going to keep _this one," _he gestured confidently to the small girl in the hospital bed. "Out of jail." He gave the girl a wink and a flash of his pearly whites.

"Bold statement," the neurosurgeon said as Addison, who was retrieving the box from the bag, stifled a snigger beside him. "Let's hope you're right."

"I'm always right," he said grinning and Addison rolled her eyes. "Pizza, anyone?"

* * *

"Savvy, I am _so _glad to see you." Addison didn't tell her that the reason was because Mark and the Self-Loving Bastard were driving her crazy. She was about to warn Savvy when the attorney replied, grabbing the door handles.

"Likewise. Now why don't we see that daughter of yours?" She pushed the door open. _"Bill?"_ She turned to the doctor. "You called _Bill Beck?" _Notorious for his cut, kill, _then _charm approach, Bill Beck was feared by everyone in DA offices across the country. She thought he was an over-confident, misogynistic, fascist shark. It doesn't matter that he's got the highest success rate; his personality gave lawyers a bad name.

"Savannah," he acknowledged the blonde before him. "I see my reputation precedes me."

"Just like your ego precedes yourself," Savvy bit, giving him a false smile. Addison just pursed her lips.

"Feisty. You should've been a redhead," Bill smirked.

"Poisonous. You should've been a politician."

"Sweetheart, if you were this quick in court, you wouldn't have lost your most recent trial."

"Hey!" Addison protested. It was an inevitable loss, the damage had been too critical for even Savvy to fix but it didn't mean that Savvy hadn't taken it hard. That was a low blow, even for Bill.

_Ouch, _Leila thought, wincing as she watched Mark's and Derek's eyes widen in horror.

She didn't even question how he knew about that, so she decided to ignore him. "Is _he _representing?" Savvy demanded, fixing a glare on Mark. He had to be the one responsible. If _Bill Beck _was representing Leila, why the hell was she here? "Mark Sloan, answer the goddamn question."

"Hi, Sav."

* * *

"Okay, war plan."

_Ooh, Bill Beck has a war plan. _Savvy rolled her eyes, but bit her tongue.

Mark, Derek, Addison and Leila perked up, listening carefully. It was late, almost nine. They'd finished their dinner, catching up and exchanging pleasantries (or not so pleasantries).

"I'll be heading downtown first thing in the morning, where I'll be meeting with the prosecutor _and _the judge to find out what the hell is going on. I'll see if I can settle a deal, if worst comes to worst, we're going to need a plea bargain. You, Blondie," Bill gestured at Savannah, intentionally using the pet name to mess with her. "Stay with Leila and make sure none of the cops give her trouble. Leila, _do not say a word to anyone about this. _Now, your Auntie Savvy is going to try to fool you into thinking she's a competent lawyer." He ignored Savvy's loud protests and Derek Shepherd's snickers. "She's not. Never talk to the police without _Uncle Bill _next to you. Everything you say, those pigs and their dirt-poor prosecutor friends will use against you—"

"In the court of law, yeah, I know."

"Good girl."

"Please don't call him Uncle Bill," Addison muttered under her breath.

Mark heard. "Why not?" He demanded.

So did Bill. "Montgomery, shush. At least Blondie's got C-cups."

_"That's _why, Mark, that's why."

"I like your breasts," Mark said, in an attempt to be consoling.

"Mark!"

"I'm going to try and get her off these cuffs. It's demeaning and ridiculous; she is _not _a damn flight risk. She's _immobile _for God's sake," Savvy said angrily.

"Good girl," Bill repeated, eyeing the blonde's chest.

"Beck, shut up."

"Mommy and Daddy here," he continued, mockingly, earning himself a slap on the arm from Addison. "Stay calm. Don't talk to the cops, or anyone else for that matter. And I'm going to need you three doctors to keep my niece in this hospital and out of police custody until we go on trial. She's supposed to be discharged in what, a week?"

"Four days," Derek answered. "I cleared her for all neurological complications, and I'm not her doctor on this case…" He wouldn't be able to do much to keep her hospitalized longer than necessary.

"Bailey is," Mark announced.

"I'll talk to Miranda," Addison spoke up. "And if we're out of options, we'll talk to the Chief." There's no way in hell she's letting her daughter set foot in jail.

"Give her an infection."

"What?" Three voices said at once, save for Mark and Savannah, who just shook her head.

"It'll prolong her stay. You can put her on antibiotics and shit later, right? Win-win," William Beck shrugged.

"Giving _my _daughter an infection is not 'win-win'," Addison growled.

"We'll lose our license," Derek said, incredulous.

"Desperate situations call for desperate means," Mark suddenly said.

"Are you agreeing with him?" Addison demanded. It was time he grew out of his boyish hero-worshipping of Bill Beck.

"Yes!"

"Seriously? You would risk Leila's health—"

"Okay, kids, enough," Bill interjected before Mark could say anything. The two had been in their second year of college when they had met him; he had been in his second year of law school. Even then, the pair had bickered like an old married couple, and some things never changed. When this thing was over, he would be the first to say he had called it, Mark and Addison growing up and having a child together. He definitely called it. "If this is related to the car accident, then the charge is laughable, I mean the prosecutors don't even _have _a case, as I far as I know. Yes, you were doing something stupid and reckless, but the dead guy was doing it _with _you, he wasn't being held at gunpoint so no way should you be charged with _manslaughter _for his death. It wasn't a gunshot or a hit and run, it's a_ blowjob."_

Mark stuck his tongue in his cheek as he watched Derek turn slack-jawed. If it were any other man saying this, he would have beat him to death. But this was...

"Bill!" Addison screeched. "This is _my daughter_ we're talking about you sick—"

"What? Like it or not, it's true. Montgomery, your daughter gave a stranger a _blowjob, _causing him to swerve and die!" The lawyer ignored Addison and turned to the bewildered child, giving her a kind pat on the shoulders and a look of nostalgia. "Honey, you deserve a medal for that, not a jail sentence. If more women were more willing to perform fellatio, there would be less divorce cases for Savannah to lose."

"I have never lost a divorce settlement in my life and I resent that implication," Savvy said indignantly.

"Do not leer at my daughter!" Addison Montgomery was like a ticking time bomb, and Bill Beck just detonated the explosion.

* * *

"Aren't you going to go back home?" Leila asked quietly. Addison and the blonde lawyer had managed to talk the officer into removing one of her handcuffs, before the two of them left with the dirty old man. Derek had excused himself a short while after, but Mark, of all people, was still with her, sitting silently in his chair—brooding, or whatever.

"I live alone in a hotel, Leila."

"Right."

"I'm your father, you know," he said, unexpectedly.

"I know." What she didn't know was where he was going with this.

He got to his feet to stand awkwardly at the side of her bed. "I'm going to get into bed with you," he declared. "In a completely non-sexual way." He didn't know why he said that. Okay, so he did. He's had _a lot _of sex with age-inappropriate women in his life. He just wanted to say it. He had to say it.

"Mark!" She pulled a face. _Ew._

"I'm going to do it, right now." He looked at his daughter, who had the deer-caught-in-headlights kind of look, which was endearing, and strange, considering she looked exactly like Addison and he didn't often get to see that look on Addison. It wasn't like anything he ever surprised her anymore. She didn't say anything, so Mark climbed onto the hospital bed. "Scoot."

She awkwardly obliged, making space for him. Leila froze when she felt Mark pull her into a hug, tucking her underneath his chin. "What are you doing?"

"I'm your father," he said gruffly, burrowing his face in her hair and grimacing. "You ever heard of shampoo?"

"Shut up."

"_You _shut up."

* * *

"Hey, Blondie."

"Save it, Beck," she muttered, but slowed down anyway. The man was like, five years older than she was or something. She was doing community service by waiting up for him.

Elderly or not, Bill quickly caught up. "What I said about the prosecutors not having a case was a load of bull, you know that, right?"

"What?" Savvy exclaimed, before lowering her voice. "You _lied _to Mark and Addie?" She wasn't that surprised. She _had _worked under him once and Bill didn't really play by the rules.

"I gave them peace, Savannah, just for the night. I don't know a damn thing yet, neither do you, and if there was another vehicle involved, and the person in that vehicle had been killed then the prosecutors have a pretty damn valid case."

"For _manslaughter? _Isn't that a bit too extreme? God, Bill, if Leila goes down for involuntary manslaughter, she's looking at a two year prison sentence!" That simply cannot happen. For Addie's sake, that can't happen. She won't let it happen. Bill can't let it happen. "Which is why you are going to the courthouse yourself tomorrow."

"Damn straight. If there's a second car, I'm going to bribe the judge into dropping the charge and hope I don't get disbarred."

"Or arrested." Savvy has learnt a long time ago that in an awful situation, if you don't laugh it off, you're going to cry. So she laughed.

* * *

"You know I'm sorry, right? Your mother and I, we're sorry," he mumbled into her ear.

"I know." She sighed. His arms were still wrapped around her, and it felt strange, but it beat an empty bed any day. "You know I didn't mean to hurt anyone, right?"

"I know."

"Am I going to go to jail?" Leila squeaked. "Because I can't handle jail. I've never been before, no matter how unlikely that sounds. God, Mark, I _killed someone. _I'm so going to jail."

"Bill's good. You won't go to jail," he assured her. If it comes down to it, he'll call Addison's parents himself. The Forbes-Montgomerys were powerful people with lots of connections, and even Bizzy, he knew, wouldn't allow her granddaughter to go to prison without a fight.

"Okay."

"Okay." They lay there in silence until she put her free arm around him and spoke.

"Can you stay for a while?" She asked her father uncertainly, her voice low to the point of a whisper. What she meant was '_Can you stay forever?' _but she would take whatever he was willing to give. Everybody else has left; she had no reason to believe he wouldn't do the same. It was all everyone was looking for, wasn't it? Someone that won't come just to pass by, a heart that won't walk away.

He ran his hands across her back, drawing soothing patterns on top of the fabric of her hospital gown. "For as long as you want." He would stay forever if she asked.

* * *

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	15. Addison's Mommy Issues

**Thank you for the incredibly lengthy (and the not lengthy, but satisfying all the same) reviews. This chapter is more feelings and conversation, so I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys think. I hope you enjoy this one and tell me everything! All opinions are appreciated. **

* * *

She stared, a lump forming in her throat. She knew it was supposed to make her feel relieved, happy; she should be smiling and trying to take a photo, but is it weird and selfish that all she could do was feel jealous, insecure, hurt and out of place? Surprise, because really, who would have thought? Jealousy, because it was supposed to be her on that bed; it was what she'd always dreamed of doing, to hold her daughter in her arms, to fall asleep with another beating heart she knew she helped create. Anguish and insecurity for all the reasons only she knew. She was steadily turning into the kind of mother she'd promised never to become, the kind that didn't know how to connect with their own children, the kind that was never loving enough, never warm enough, never good enough. The same daughter that repeatedly told her she was selfish, the same one that hated her and wouldn't speak two sentences to her that entire afternoon was curled up against her father on her hospital bed. A part of her understood Leila's reluctance in opening up to her. After all, she was the one who'd given her daughter away. She was the one that had kept it a secret, the one that had self-righteously denied two people of having a family. Mark? He was just the poor guy that had never known. Understanding the reasons doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, though. It doesn't mean she doesn't feel even more inadequate; left out, and stupid and guilty for feeling all of those things when the only thing she should be feeling is joy. The normalcy of the image in front of her was like a shot to her heart, which was ironic really, because it was all she herself longed for, to be normal, ever since she was a child. It was the one thing she wanted that her parents weren't able to provide and a part of her had always hated them a bit for that. Her own daughter, and Mark, were finally happy. So why couldn't she just be happy for them? _Because they're happy without you, _a voice mocked. It didn't sound like Bizzy, Archer, or the Captain and that surprised her. The voice sounding exactly like a nasty version of herself surprised her.

"Addison?" Leila called hoarsely. She blinked, wondering if she was seeing things. Mark was fast asleep. She had never been a heavy sleeper and waking up to see her mother standing in the dark, hovering above her was certainly a surprise. She looked down to see Addison's hand on top of hers—the reason she woke up—before the woman quickly pulled away, as if it burned. "What are you—?"

"Shh, honey, go to sleep." Feeling like an intruder, Addison Montgomery turned and walked away. The only evidence of her ever being there at all was the small stack of Mark's neatly folded clothes she had left on the bedside table.

* * *

"Well, I'll be damned." Savannah turned to her friend, grinning. Mark Sloan, man-whore extraordinaire cuddled up to a young, Addison-lookalike. If someone had told her ten years ago that Mark and Addison had a child together and that _Mark Sloan _would end up lying on a small bed, snuggled with his teenage daughter, she would have laughed and asked where the person was getting the drugs, and whether she could have some as well. "Sweetie, isn't this adorable?"

"Yeah, adorable. Um, yes!" Addison replied, copying Savvy's excitement, though her smile never quite reached her eyes, and watched as the blonde took out her phone and quickly snapped a photo.

"Weiss is going to _love _this," Savvy squealed, attaching and sending the photograph to her husband. She looked up just in time to see Addison's face fall. "Okay, what's wrong?" She demanded.

"What, apart from the fact that my daughter's handcuffed to her hospital bed?" She asked, feigning nonchalance.

"Um, _no. _Addie, you are a horrible liar. You would've made a terrible lawyer." She pulled her friend from the doorway and into the hall, which was relatively deserted. It was, after all, way too early in the morning for regular people to be awake. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing! I am totally fine. Come on, Sav, let's go wake them up," Addison urged.

"Actually, I have a better idea," she said, tugging Addison towards the elevators. "What's better than waking up to the smell of coffee and hot, sugary pastries? Come on."

"Great," the redhead sighed, relieved.

_Addison Montgomery, you are _not _off the hook, _the blonde thought silently.

* * *

At the coffee shop, the table vibrated and Savvy grabbed her cellphone. "I got a text from Bill," she explained, before looking down at the screen. _There's a second car. Don't tell Addison. _She gulped. Did that mean she could tell Mark? "He's waiting to talk to the judge," she told Addison, placing her phone facedown onto the table, her court-face on.

"Leila's going to be okay, right?" Addison asked, putting her coffee down. Savvy's face was too unreadable for her liking. "She can't go to jail."

"Bill's good. She won't."

"Are you sure? Are you really, completely sure she won't? Because she hates me, Sav, she hates me and I deserve every ounce of that hate but my own daughter hates me and now she might go to prison and she doesn't deserve prison."

Savvy stared. The redhead was on a roll, ranting nervously.

"I always thought I'd be good at this, you know, even though I lucked out and scored _Bizzy _as a mother. I always imagined myself being this supercool, rock star mom. How is it that I'm terrible with Leila? I save _babies _for crying out loud. I handle kids every day and yet my own child hates me. Leila can't go to prison."

She silently took in the small outburst. "You save babies and Leila won't go to prison," she repeated. She debated on pointing out that what Addison said made no sense whatsoever, that Leila isn't in fact, a baby, but a teenager with mostly angry feelings and hormones, a real person and not just some newborn that cries, sleeps, and poops. "She doesn't hate you," she opted to say instead.

"I don't know how to talk to her."

"Addie, it takes time." She grabbed her friend's hand. Looking into Addie's glassy eyes killed her.

"Time that I may or may not have! She _killed _someone,Savvy. She might go to jail. And I don't think time's the issue here, at all, because it's me. Do you know what I did the first week she got here?" Addison demanded.

The blonde waited, ignoring her phone as it buzzed again, signaling another message.

"I denied her existence, Savvy." She let the fact that she was a terrible mother sink in before continuing guiltily. "I walked around this hospital _wishing _for her to go away, and only told Mark because he walked in on McDreamy—Derek— un-dreamily yelling at me."

"Addie, you were scared. That makes you _human, _not a bad mother." She remembered how much Addie had wanted to find this child in grad school, how she would drink herself to oblivion every year, on Leila's birthday, the guilt consuming her bit by bit. Savvy remembered how much of a wreck she'd been when she finally came clean to her after a night of partying after their respective board exams. "She's six now," Addison had told her, on the floor of their bathroom. "Who?" Savvy had asked, confused, wondering if this was the alcohol talking. "Leila," Addison had said, before retching into the toilet bowl, choking on her own tears, finally confiding in her the morning after. She remembered her friend sobbing on the phone after a conversation with Derek about having children. She remembered telling Addison she needed help and that she would eventually have to tell Derek, and she remembered the redhead blatantly refusing to tell anyone else because she thought nobody would look at her the same way again if they knew. "Even you treat me differently," were Addison's words. "They know now, and that's all that matters," Savannah gently said.

"That's not all," Addison smiled wryly. "Okay, so after we told her—well, after _I _told her, because honestly, I was the wicked witch in this and not Mark, so I had to do it. I made the bed, you know, so I had to lie in it. Anyway, I used Leila as my own personal shrink for almost a week, before all this stuff happened. I didn't bother to get to know my own daughter. I only went to her with my own problems, or when I wanted to get away from lunch with Derek. Or Mark. I put my daughter, whom I had previously abandoned, through all my personal crap. _Who does that? _Apparently, I do."

"Oh, Sweetie." Savvy sighed, handing Addie a couple of paper napkins.

"She calls me 'Addison' can you believe that?" The redhead laughed humorlessly, ignoring the wetness rolling down her cheeks.

"Like you call Bizzy," the other woman said quietly.

"I'm practically Bizzy. How screwed up is that?" Addison lowered her voice, as if they were conspiring against something. "Last night, after I got you settled in your hotel room, I went back. I saw Leila and Mark, in her bed together, cuddling. Savvy, how much of a bitch does one have to be to be jealous of that? But I mean, come on, he's _Mark Sloan. _No-strings-attached Mark Sloan and he was there all night, holding his daughter while she slept—the same daughter who won't even speak three sentences to me! How is it fair that he gets to be the good parent, and I'm the one our kid hates? She woke up, Savvy. She saw me, I panicked, and I ran. I ran away. I have no clue how to be a parent."

"Addison, no one has a clue. It's something you learn." She picked up her phone. "And no matter what you think, you're not being _punished _for giving her up for adoption. It was the right thing. Not telling Mark was wrong, but you did the right thing. Plenty of adopted kids grow up in loving families and end up _perfectly fine. _You had no way of knowing Leila would be any different. Jail or no jail, this is not your fault." She looked down at her cellphone. "Damnit, Bill," Savvy swore. Fine letters on her bright screen glared back at her. _Got pulled from case. Call me._

* * *

"You tried to _bribe the judge?" _Mark shouted, incredulous. He knew Bill could be unorthodox, but this was beyond asshood. Leila's life was on the line, and Bill went ahead and got himself removed from the damn case.

"Don't yell," Leila pleaded. It was all too much. As far as she knew, the prosecutors actually do have a solid case against her and her best chance at winning, at a future _out _of jail, just got himself pulled off the case. She knew he cared, but everything was already going to hell without Mark yelling every five seconds.

"_He bribed the judge!"_

"Mark, shut up, there's a police officer on the other side of the wall," Savvy snapped. She wasn't about to let Bill get arrested, not when she was now the one representing Leila. There's no way she was about to risk this alone.

"I don't care if you go to jail. You gambled on my daughter's future! Give me a reason not to turn you in," he threatened.

"Sometimes, people do the wrong things for the right reasons," Addison said softly. The man risked _his _future for Leila's; that much she appreciated. She also understood Bill's way of thinking more than anyone would've guessed. If Mark turned his friend in, he would only regret it later.

Mark ignored her and turned to his friend. "Bill, what the hell? Your priority should be keeping my daughter out of jail, not _join her._"

He didn't try to explain himself, nor explain that he'd risk imprisonment and his entire career as well; he wasn't the type to parade that around. "Sloan, you turn me in and you're basically giving Savannah the green light to send your precious daughter to jail."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Savvy muttered under her breath. "Mark, you have to calm down," she raised her voice. It was about as far as she would go to admitting she needed Bill's help.

"I don't _have _to do anything!" He yelled childishly.

"But we'd appreciate it if you do," Addison spoke calmly. "Bill, tell us what you know."

_At least one of them is an adult. _Leila sighed.

He gave Mark a wary look before speaking. "There was another vehicle in the accident, a container truck. The driver died at the scene. The man in your car, Leila, his pants were down when they found him. They're arresting you based on the assumption that you'd committed a reckless act that endangered the lives of other people, resulting in the deaths of two men, one which they can hold you accountable for."

"But they have no proof she did anything that caused the accident, right?" Savvy demanded. "No tapes, witnesses?"

"None, apart from bite marks around his penis," he deadpanned. No witness or surveillance cameras would be able to make out what the people were doing inside the car at that time of the night anyway, but the bite marks make for a very convincing story, especially if they match it to Leila.

_Well, fuck. _"Great," Savvy curled her lips in distaste. "And that's when you tried to offer the judge, what, money?"

_No, I tried to offer him my body. _He fought hard not to roll his eyes. "Yes." He was lucky he'd gotten off with a warning.

"What the hell do we do now?" Mark asked.

"We can try to get them to drop the charge to a smaller one, like a misdemeanor. Let them set the price for bail and get her community service instead of imprisonment," Savvy told him.

"_Try?" _He didn't want to be an asshole but Bill was their best shot.

"Yes, Mark, try."

"The truck cut in front of us," Leila said. "I didn't cause the accident."

"Sweetheart, you don't know that. You were a bit pre_occupied _at the time," Bill drawled.

"Hey, hey, this is _my_ daughter you're speaking to!"

"Mark, calm down, damn it," Savvy growled. They had more pressing issues to think about than Bill's charming personality.

"Were you able to speak to the dead man's family?" Addison asked quietly, focusing her attention on Bill. She was thinking like a Forbes-Montgomery now.

Bill thought for a moment, wondering where she was going with this. "Not yet, but I'm sure he has family." _Mourning his death. He's probably the one earning as well, poor guy. _Oh."We can offer them some form of compensation and make a deal with the prosecutors. Misdemeanor. Twelve months of community service maybe even less."

"We're going to throw money at them?" Leila asked, disgusted.

"Yes," Mark and Addison answered at the same time. Leila's greatest concern should be staying out of jail, not human decency.

"Is that even possible?" She'd killed someone. How much was a human life worth?

"It is," Bill told her kindly.

She thought it was bullshit, the fact that Leila was the one paying for this. She was _eighteen. _She hadn't even been driving. "How much?" Addison asked Bill. She didn't know how much would suffice. He was somebody's son, somebody's husband, and father. She'd never dealt with this before. How much did she have to offer as to not insult the grieving family?

"How much are you willing to pay?" The man asked. "Savannah should take note for when she negotiates again on Wednesday."

"I'm not a moron," the woman muttered.

"Your track record says otherwise. How much, Montgomery?"

"As much as they want." Addison took her checkbook and pen out from her handbag. She signed an empty paper and tore it out. She had more money than she had time to spend anyway. She resented how much her actions resembled her parents, how it seemed like she was paying someone to keep quiet. It was exactly what the Captain would do. Nonetheless, she handed the check to her friend saying, "Hell, the prosecutors can have some too for all I care. Charm them, not bribe—offer it as a gift. She'll do community service, but keep it off her records. No trial. I've had enough, Savvy. Make this disappear."

* * *

"I've been hearing some interesting things."

She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned around. "I wish I had no idea what you were talking about," Addison gave her mentor a weak smile.

"Addison, if you need to take some time off, all you have to do is say so. I would understand," Richard told her. It was late. He'd been about to sign out when he spotted her standing alone on the balcony, staring into nothing.

"No! I mean, no. Work is good." Work was a good distraction. If she had time on her hands, she wouldn't know what to do with it. Spend time with Leila? "I'm fine, Richard, really."

"Somehow I'm not quite convinced."

She sighed. "Did you and Adele ever think about having children?" Addison asked him.

Ellis Grey had always told him that if he wanted to be successful, he shouldn't have kids. He'd always wanted children, but as he advanced in his career, he spent less time away from home, less time with Adele, and less time thinking about anything else at all. "Of course."

"I never thought it would be like this."

Richard Webber looked at her curiously.

"I feel guilty when I look at her," Addison admitted. "I don't know how to talk to her or get to know her properly, and now there's this other thing."

"You'll get the hang of it," he assured her, though he wouldn't know himself. "Leila will be fine."

"I hope so. I'm starting to think that I'm just not cut out to be a mom, you know?"

"That's just fear speaking. Addison, no one is 'cut out' to be anything. You just have to be it."

"Yeah?"

"You'll be a great mom."

* * *

"I was jealous." They were sitting in Leila's room together, just the three of them, in comfortable silence. Her bare feet were on Mark's lap.

He looked up from his phone. "Of?"

"Of the two of you, bonding, being cuddly and all," she said, smiling sheepishly.

"Why?" He asked, as Leila quietly focused on the both of them. If he allowed himself to see the funny side of it, he would be amused by how she's been less catty and increasingly agreeable ever since she got her new metal accessory.

"I don't know, it's stupid…" she trailed off. "Okay, so it's kind of embarrassing—"

"I'm in handcuffs, you don't get to be embarrassed."

"_Okay, _so as I was saying, I don't know a single thing about my own daughter. I don't know what ice cream flavor she likes so I had to get her chocolate; I don't know what she wants to be when she grows up. I don't know a thing and that's because I only talk about myself. I'm a horrible mother and I—"

"Mint chip," Leila said suddenly, cutting her off.

"What?" Addison looked up, startled.

"I like mint chocolate chip ice cream."

"Oh." She flushed. "I always thought I'd be good at this… parenting thing, you know? It turns out I'm not, and you are, Mark, so I was jealous, is all."

"That's crazy."

"Is that why you ran away last night?" Leila asked.

"Yes, I mean, no. I don't know." She saw her daughter arch an eyebrow. "I felt like I was trespassing or something. It was your moment, and I was just _there."_

"Well maybe I wanted you to be there," the girl said before blushing and grabbing the outdated copy of Women's Weekly. It was the only thing the hospital had. She cursed her stupid feelings and attachment issues.

"You did?" Addison asked, surprised. Leila didn't answer. The young girl went back to her magazine, burying her face in it.

"She's just shy," Mark smirked, setting his phone down. He brought his hands to Addison's feet, holding them down as she flinched at the touch, before starting to knead the soles of her feet.

"What are you doing?" She thought about the times he'd done that when her marriage was falling apart.

"Foot massage," he told her like it was obvious.

"If this is going somewhere, get out of my room," Leila said from behind her book.

"It wasn't, but now that you mention it…" He gave Addison a sneaky grin, reaching up her thighs, which she firmly pressed together.

"Mark," Leila warned.

"Shut it, delinquent," he muttered, eyes widening when Addison's strangled gasp made him realize what he'd just said. "Leila, I am so sorry." Her turned to look at her, nervous, thinking he'd upset her.

She put her book down. "Oh, you should see your face," she cackled.

"Criminal," he jabbed playfully. He looked at Addison. "We should let her go to jail," he whispered loudly before a pillow hit him in the side of his face.

"Mark!"

"Mark, that is extremely bad juju. Take it back," Addison insisted, half-serious.

"Juju?" Leila asked. "Hey, can you give me back my pillow?"

He threw it back at her. "Juju's her thing."

"Yeah."

"You're weird," she told Addison.

She gave her a pointed look. "Honey, you're in handcuffs."

* * *

"She's out cold." She looked at him.

With Leila asleep, they crept out of the room together, walking to the hospital entrance, intent on finding a cab to take them back to the hotel. They stood in companionable stillness, his arm around her waist. He bent down to press a kiss on her temple before pulling her closer, whispering, "You're far from a horrible mother."

* * *

"I remember you said you wanted to go to the art museum?" Addison began.

That was even before she'd found out that he birth parents were at the hospital. "You do?" Leila asked nonchalantly, masking her excitement at the fact that Addison remembered.

"Yeah," Addison grinned.

"You got the cultured gene from me," Mark told Leila. "Your mom? She watches Star Wars and reads medical journals."

"Seriously?"

"I do not," she protested. Addison turned to Leila. "I'll have you know that I speak French and play a number of musical instruments. And yes, I like Star Wars," she accepted, her lips quirking into a smile.

"You named our daughter after a character in that geeky series," he said dryly. She didn't just 'like' it.

"What's wrong with my name?"

"Nothing!" He quickly said. "Your name's perfect," he assured her, before changing the topic. "So, the sculpture park, huh?"

"Yeah, museums are cool. They're quiet but everything there's alive," the girl replied.

"Tell me you're not into the hippie, voodoo, psychedelic crap," Addison said.

"Star Wars," Mark coughed.

Leila laughed. "No… No, I'm not. They're just beautiful places to be, that's all. I draw a little," she confessed shyly.

"Now _that _is all me," Mark said proudly. His little girl could draw, just like him.

"You draw?" She found that hard to believe.

"A little bit. I used to love it when I was younger. Now, I make people beautiful. I make the world a better place." He held his head high. "Like God."

Addison rolled her eyes at that. She brought life into the word and even she didn't vocally compare herself to God. "I remember your anatomy sketches in college," she told him, recalling the detailed drawings in his notebook that had mesmerized her when she'd first saw them. She looked at Leila. "They were amazing," she confirmed.

"Is that why you fell in love with me?" He teased. "My amazing anatomical heart sketches? My beautiful protein filaments?"

Leila raised her eyebrows. "You are just as geeky as she is."

* * *

Forty-four hours later, on Wednesday evening, the day before their daughter's hospital discharge, the both of them received the same ominous text message, and multiple missed calls from Bill and Savvy, causing Addison to run out of the OR prep-room in surgical scrubs in order to find Bailey and Richard, and Mark to head straight to the pharmacy.

_Settlement postponed. They want to take her into custody._

* * *

**Duun, dun, dunnnnn. Don't forget to feed the writer!**


	16. How I Met Your Mother

**Hi guys, first: sorry for the incredibly long delay. :( I've been terribly busy... I wrote this chapter on my phone in the car, I love my readers that much; I actually have another test on October 17th so I'll be gone for another two weeks. (Please don't shoot me). Thank you for the amazing reviews (100 reviews! Wow!) and favorites, they make me happy and giggly for days. To address some of them: As much as I would love to drop everything and just write, I can't do that haha. Love the two comments collaborating how they would defend imaginary characters-my readers are kick-ass people! Please don't stalk me over fanfiction. To my Spanish readers, I actually copy and paste your reviews into Google Translate and squee over your kindness and Spanish slang that wouldn't translate. **

**Thanks again, you guys are a fantastic crew. Enjoy this one! Read & Review for more chapters!**

* * *

"Do something productive, _now,_" she barked, making sure all of her interns had already scuttled off before speaking again. "Addison, I am sorry—I am. I've already signed her discharge papers." Her throat felt dry as she watched the redhead's face fall. It had hurt her to say it; she considered Addison Montgomery a friend, someone she respected professionally, and on top of that, she herself was a mother. She was subconsciously putting herself into the woman's shoes and she did not like it one bit. It made her soft. She slowed her stride. "There's nothing wrong with her."

"Miranda, please, just give her another check-up before you leave," she insisted, walking beside the other doctor. Addison Montgomery did not beg for things, she ordered them, but she was almost on her knees now. She simply couldn't let Leila go into police custody. After all she has put Leila through, Addison didn't think that her daughter deserved that.

"And what, make up a diagnosis?" Miranda Bailey hated how harsh her words seemed but it was truthful. If the rumor mill was accurate, by accident or not, the girl had killed someone and Miranda wanted nothing less than to get mixed up in it all. Especially right now, as the candidates for Chief Resident are being chosen.

"I know it's a lot to ask—"

"Damn right it's a lot to ask." She could be charged for what, obstruction of justice? She wracked her mind for all the different reasons she could get sued or sent to prison. Malpractice was a sure thing. _What else, aiding a criminal? Accessory to murder? _She couldn't risk all that; she had a son to think about now.

Addison winced, before trying again. "I'm just asking you to keep her here for a few days. Until Monday."

"You're asking me to lie. On paper. In a murder investigation." She aggressively slapped the elevator buttons and internally willed it to appear. _Come on, come on. _She hated saying no to people, especially when she knew it really mattered.

"_Manslaughter,_ Miranda. She didn't even do anything wrong. They're basically setting her up as their scapegoat. And it won't necessarily _be _a lie," Addison protested. "You'll just need to re-examine her, find signs of anemia and advise ambulatory care to monitor her properly, which will make her unfit to leave the hospital."

"Which, she isn't… I'd be lying, just so we're clear." She looked at the taller woman. "Have you talked to the Chief about this?" _Say yes, Addison._

"No," Addison admitted. She saw the hesitant look on her colleague's face and quickly continued. "But I will. And he'll understand. Richard will understand," she fibbed, as the elevators dinged and Miranda Bailey slipped into the opening elevator.

"Oh, no, no, no," she shook her head, stepping backwards into the compartment. "There is no way I am jeopardizing my life, my career and this hospital without the Chief's consent—even for you," she declared. "I need someone to back me up. Talk to the Chief," Bailey said in a kinder tone, the doors closing on the frantic attending at the very moment she finished speaking, as if on cue.

* * *

"Addison!" Derek was on his way to the bar when the person in question had almost crashed into him, which he found odd, seeing as they were in a seemingly empty hallway. She made a move to dart away, causing them to awkwardly walk into each other for a second time. "Jesus, Addie, slow down," the doctor said lightheartedly before looking down at her, watching her carefully for the first time in months. She was obviously beside herself. He recalled his most recent encounter with Mark, who had been equally, if not more frazzled than she was. _What in the world was going on?_

She'd been in a hurry coming from the Chief's office, trying to find Mark. Richard wasn't answering his cell phone and was nowhere to be found and it was getting too late for her to be comfortable with. She dreaded tomorrow. A mother was supposed to protect her daughter, at all costs. She'd failed Leila once and it broke her heart to think that she would fail her daughter for the second time. To make matters worse, she was in a bout of self-pity. Bill and Savvy hadn't been able to help her, Miranda had been reluctant to sign simple forms, and just when things were getting good, everything was quickly going to hell. Her serendipity was turning into lost chances and opportunities and failed relationships, just because a fucking trucker didn't know how to drive. But then again, it was what brought Leila to her. At this point, Addison was pretty certain that God was a middle-aged woman with premenstrual syndrome, and She must be having one of her moments. Even worse, the person she'd run face-first into had to be Derek. Derek, who had 'been there' for her for a couple of hours, and later disappear for a few days. She hadn't expected him to care. He had no obligation to, after all. She stepped aside and continued ahead in an attempt to get away. "Derek, I can't—" Her voice broke when she felt a tight grasp on her wrist pulling her to a halt. "Derek."

"It's Leila, isn't it?" Since the night of Leila's arrest, he hadn't been able to physically "be there "for his old friends as much as he'd wanted to. Maybe a small part of him hadn't exactly wanted to, since it would mean constantly having to see both of them together with Leila, as a complete family, something he'd never had with Addison. Mark's betrayal had been the worst thing about the entire affair, and bit-by-bit he was getting over that, with Meredith's help. He hated to think of Meredith as a rebound relationship but he'd be lying to say she didn't offer him comfort and was a huge part in helping him forget the whole ordeal. He would never admit it but without Meredith, things would eventually bring him back to Addison. He'd found love, which made the idea of Mark together with Addison bearable, but ever since his and Addison's confrontation about their past and having children together, their conversation had been replaying in his mind. Addison had obviously had a hard a time, back in New York, and the fact that she'd never confided in him hurt more than he thought it would. Either way, he was much happier preoccupying himself with work and Meredith rather than think about what Addison had implied, what she had felt about him never being there for her when they were married, and wonder if it was true, that he'd been so absent that he'd pushed her into Mark's willing arms—if all of it had been his fault. His eyes worriedly bore into hers, trying to find some emotion, but she was avoiding his gaze.

Addison knew she had to find Mark and Richard, and that she was losing time, but it was _Derek,_ so she let him guide her to one of the chairs in the waiting room. She cursed everything that was him and the soft spot she would always have for Derek Shepherd.

"Tell me," he urged, when they're sitting side by side. Derek looked at her, concerned. His eyes instinctively glanced at his wristwatch. Meredith was going to have to wait. He only hoped that she would be understanding, and not question his actions or be upset over the fact that he was spending the little time they had together out of work on his ex-wife.

She took a deep breath and looked up at him. "They rescheduled Leila's settlement. I just talked to Miranda and Leila's being discharged tomorrow," she began levelly. Unless she finds Richard… She remembered the way Miranda had looked at her. There'd been pity in the woman's eyes, but she'd ultimately denied her any help any way, and it had been awful—not that she blamed her. She knew it was a tough decision and Miranda had made a smart one by not getting involved.

"You're kidding." Derek stared into her bloodshot eyes. "Addie, do you want me to talk to Bailey?" She sniffled. _Don't cry… Damn it, Addison, don't cry. _He'd always hated it when she, or anyone else for that matter, cried. It made it much harder for him to focus. He sat there dumbly, wondering what to do. When he tried to pull her to him in what he hoped to be a comforting hug, she feebly pushed him away.

"Listen, thank you, but I really have to go find Richard," Addison told him, getting up. She brushed away her tears, feeling more weak and pathetic today than she had all year. She'd begged Miranda Bailey to help her and had basically cried in front of Derek more this year than in their entire marriage, and it wasn't even June yet.

"Addie—" Derek got up with her, grabbing her hand.

Her tears were welling up again. _Get a grip, Addison. _She shook him off. "Look, I know you mean well, but you have to stop doing this." She watched his eyebrows scrunch together in confusion. "This, Derek," she gestured wildly in the air. "The past week has been an emotional rollercoaster for me—and not the good kind, you know how much I loved Coney Island—my daughter's going to prison and it's only one of the screw ups in my life right now. I've been trying really hard not to cry and was actually being successful, which is unbelievable because it's me we're talking about here, but you have to stop calling me Addie and pretending you ca—re—abou—t—me," she choked, no longer bothering to stop the tears. "Because every time you do I just—I can't—"

_Damn it. _He put his arms around her and pulled her close to him. _Closer than would be appropriate. _He wondered how he was going to explain the wet spots on the front of his shirt to Meredith. _She'll understand, _he convinced himself. Meredith was great that way. She understood."It's okay," he spoke into Addison's ear as he rubbed her back and felt her relax against him. After everything that's been going on, he thought she deserved to cry, and to be held as she cried. She should just let it all out. He felt guilty and resentful that she would feel that way about him, but given how he'd behaved when she'd first shown up in Seattle, he realized it was sort of rational and that he deserved it. He'd been so busy pining after Meredith that he hadn't exactly acted like he cared much about anything else. He ran his hands through her beautiful locks of hair, bewildered and unsure of how to handle it all, which was stupid, considering he'd been married to her for more than a decade. He knew that things between them had changed—both of them had done their part in making sure of that. Some things, however, would never change. He didn't have to 'pretend to care', because he would always care, no matter how busy he was or how standoffish he could seem. He could be in love with Meredith or anyone else, but a part of him would always love Addison. She and Mark were both family. "Shh," he soothed, reminding himself not to say 'Addie'. He thought it was slightly ridiculous, but if the nickname made her cry harder—he had to wonder if it was the name itself, or if it was the fact that he was the one saying it—he wouldn't use it. "I care, you know," he said almost casually. She didn't respond. "I—Mark?" Derek awkwardly eased Addison out of his arms and eyed his friend, whom had suddenly appeared a meter away from him. His eyes fell on Mark's hands.

Addison took a startled step back and rubbed her eyes. They narrowed when she spotted what Mark was holding. "Why are you carrying a needle and _what _is that in your hands?"

"Amphetamines," he replied warily.

"What are you going to do with…" Derek trailed off. _Oh. _He stepped in front of Mark, blocking his way to the pathway to Leila's room.

"No." She stared. Was he going insane?

"It's only for a few seconds. It'll keep her hospitalized. Come on Derek, I don't have time for this," he protested, his hand shaking.

"Mark, don't, there's a cop in front of her room," Derek tried to reason. He thought he smelled whiskey, or gin, on the man's breath, but he couldn't be sure.

"He has to leave to take a piss sometime tonight." He'd been watching for a while now.

"You're not inducing a heart attack on my daughter, Mark," Addison said in a low voice. He took a step towards her, swaying slightly, the light hitting his face. She took a look at him and was frightened to see the crazed glint in his eyes. _"Have you been drinking?"_

He ignored her question. His daughter wasn't going to jail. "She's not going to have a heart attack," he scoffed. "It's just going to get her heart racing for a bit and give us grounds to keep her here."

"Mark," Derek warned. The idiot was going to get himself arrested. "Give me the drugs." The man didn't budge.

Addison glanced over to the police officer at the far end of the room. To her horror, he left his post near Leila's door and walked towards the other end of the hall, disappearing behind a corner. _No. _Her facial expression betrayed her and Mark was gone in a flash. "No!"

"Damn it!" Derek swore, running after his friend, Addison right on his heels.

"Derek, get a crash cart!" She yelled, running into the room. Mark had already made his way to the IV stand. Leila was asleep, slowly stirring from all the noise. "Mark, don't do this," Addison pleaded. She tried to grab his arm, but he forcefully shrugged her off.

"Just give me five seconds," he mumbled. Addison was way too concerned for Leila's good. He was doing the right thing. He was protecting her, he reasoned.

"Mark, you're going to kill her!" She shouted. He had reeked of alcohol, though with his actions, she didn't need further confirmation that he was intoxicated. He had to be, to pull this type of thing.

"Page Bailey, Addison." He took hold of Leila's IV tube.

"What—?" Leila looked up, rubbing her eyes. "Mark? Addie?"

"Mark!"

Leila's eyes widened. Addison was in absolute hysterics now. What the hell was Mark doing? She sat up when the doors burst open.

"Derek, stop him!" Addison cried.

The neurosurgeon pushed the crash cart to the side and lunged at the larger man, pulling him backwards, causing him to let go of the needle and the IV in surprise. Derek reached for the needle as the monitor sounded, beeping erratically as the number grew, drawing a sharp cry from Addison. He had been too late.

She felt a pulsing in her neck, head and chest. "What did he—" Leile gasped for breath as the monitor went crazy. She saw Addison pull the crash cart towards her. Leila tried to get up but the tightness in her chest prevented her from moving. _I'm going to die._

"Relax, Red, she wont need it," Mark drawled from the floor, watching the monitor screen, his vision a bit disoriented but he could still make out the numbers. He hadn't given Leila enough to _kill _her. Addison shot him a hateful look, regardless. He didn't understand why she was so upset.

"You don't _know _that!" Addison placed an oxygen mask over Leila's face.

"I _do _know that. I gave her the right dose," he said almost smugly.

"You tried to give her a heart attack!"

_Mark did what? _Leila panicked as the beeping quickened, signaling her increasing heart rate.

"She wont_ go_ into cardiac arrest. She'll hit slightly over a hundred per minute, then it'll gradually slow down."

"You tried to give your own daughter a heart attack," Derek said with disbelief, breathing heavily. No wonder Addison had been crying her eyes out. The father of her child was a madman. Leila's pulse rate was alternating between a hundred and three and a hundred and one per minute now. It didn't show any sign that it would be slowing any time soon and he was already a half and hour late. Meredith was going to be beyond pissed. She probably thought he'd stood her up.

"What?" Leila was gasping, struggling to breathe. "Mark!"

"I _didn't. _Addison, _page Bailey."_

His phone rang. _Meredith. _"I'll do it on my way out," Derek offered. He shook his head and turned to walk out the door, giving Addie a small hug as he passed her. _What was Mark thinking?_

"Mark, what the hell is wrong with you?" Addison demanded, once Derek had run off, probably to see his doe-eyed kindergartener.

"_You_ didn't want her to go to jail."

"I'd rather she stay alive!"

"She will. Look, her heart rate's coming down," he said excitedly.

He was right. Leila's stats were dropping. It didn't mean that what he'd just done wasn't absolutely crazy and reckless. "Arrhythmia. Heart failure. Heart rupture. Cardiogenic shock," she ranted, stony-faced, too mad to even look at him.

"What?"

"The risks you've just exposed our daughter to!" She spat angrily.

"No heart attack, no risk." He corrected, struggling to stand up.

"You're out of your mind," Addison snarled. "I just talked to Bailey this evening. She's going to think I had something to do with this."

"So what? She'll still have to keep Leila in the hospital." He took the empty needle Derek left on the bedside table and stuffed it into his coat pocket, along with the wrapper. His left foot got caught on the other one and he slightly stumbled into Addison, who caught him and tried to push him away, giving him momentum to stand on his own feet.

"Mark, what the hell did you do?" Leila breathed. She could still anxiously feel her heart racing. Addison helped her take the oxygen mask off.

He was thankful for the whiskey. He would never have pulled it off without some liquid courage. Mark only looked down at his daughter with a lopsided grin. "I just saved you from going to prison."

* * *

"You've got to be kidding me." Mark was at the entrance, holding a ridiculously colorful bouquet of flowers in his hand and bore a hopeful look on his face. She wanted to maul his face off.

"Leila, come on."

"You tried to kill me!" Okay so he didn't, but he risked her life and she didn't know how to feel about that. Hurt? She wasn't sure. It wasn't something she'd ever imagine a parent would do to their kid. And he thought he was going to get back on her good side with _flowers? _Such bullshit was incomprehensible to her.

"I didn't! I sped up your heart, there's a difference." He took a step closer, shutting the door behind him. He thought girls were supposed to like flowers and all these materialistic crap.

"It felt like I was dying," she said flatly. Dying, like his goddamn flowers were. "I could've had a heart attack!"

"But you didn't, and it was effective, wasn't it? Now you get to be a brat in this nice and comfy hospital bed instead of on the cold, hard floors of _jail." _He didn't know what her problem was. He'd risked _Bailey's wrath _and getting fired among other things for her last night and here she was being ungrateful about it.

She wanted to ask how he knew the floors of jail were cold and hard, from experience perhaps? She held her tongue. Leila looked at Addison for help, finding her mother bent over, seemingly immersed in whatever was in her stupid, overpriced phone. _Fine._ Leila settled for a grumpy, "I could've _died,"_ instead.

He winced and looked at the ground. His calculations of the dosage had been damn near perfect, but the thought sickened him. He imagined the headlines. _Girl killed by father. Criminal killed by surgeon father. Criminal killed by handsome surgeon father._

"Look, he was drunk," Addison interjected, looking up from her phone. She had known what that silent beat meant even before she saw it. Mark was now predictably staring at the floor like a dejected puppy. Now that she thought about it, he sort of reminded her of a sad cocker spaniel.

Mark turned to her, surprised that she'd chosen to help him out. "Tipsy, but yeah." _And it worked!_ He wanted to scream._ It worked and it was all that mattered._ Why wasn't anyone saying anything about how he had succeeded? Everyone, including Derek and the entire hospital it seems, were only concerned about what didn't happen. They were only hung up on the fact that she 'could have died'. _Fucking neurotics these people are._

"What, so being drunk gives him the pass to be an asshole?" She demanded, fixing a stare on Addison. To not care if she lived or died?

"I don't think he has a problem being an asshole sober," the redhead said dryly.

"Hey!"

"Let me finish," Addison told him, impatient. _"However,_ I don't think he was trying to be an asshole. He was reckless, but he had good intentions. I was more than upset, but he's right. The dosage wasn't enough to cause permanent damage. Mark, apologize," she ordered.

"Sorry, Leila." He walked over and handed her the flowers. She didn't take them, so he dropped it in her lap, squishing the petals and earning him a loud protest and slap on the wrist from the teenage girl.

Addison raised her eyebrows. "Leila, say you forgive him."

"I forgive him." She wilted under Addison's glare. Pouting, she looked up at Mark. "I forgive you," she said begrudgingly. She picked up the horribly ugly flowers and picked out the loose and torn petals and leaves, ignoring her father as he stood awkwardly at her bedside.

"Mark, come here," Addison called. He shuffled towards her, looking forlorn, and she waited.

He slumped back into the chair. After a while, he opened his mouth to speak. "Those came from the heart," he told Leila, giving the discarded flowers a pointed look. _And they weren't free._ "You didn't even look at the card."

_There's a card. _Addison listened quietly.

"Get whale soon. Really." Leila pursed her lips. "Are you implying something?"

"I thought it was cute," he protested. The card was pinned to the front of the bouquet and had little sick whale on the front. He leaned over to put his head on Addison's shoulder, his heart swelling when she reached an arm around him to play with his hair.

"It is. Leila, say thank you."

"Thank you." The girl rolled her eyes. Her mother was so biased and totally liked Mark better.

"Like you mean it," she said. Addison practically felt Mark's smugness seeping out.

"_Thank _you."

He playfully stuck out his tongue, taunting her.

"Keep your tongue to yourself," Leila snarled. _What are you, seven?_

Mark looked up at Addison's reproachful eyes, shrugging. "Love you," he told Addison with innocent eyes, flashing Leila a sneaky smirk.

Addison leaned into the couch and went back to her phone, an amused smile on her face. She was stuck with a pair of twelve-year-olds.

* * *

"How did you guys meet?"

It was an innocent enough question. "He was fooling around with his girlfriend in the university chapel when I walked in on him."

Mark saw Leila grimace. "We were talking!"

* * *

_Her roommate had hung a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on their doorknob, and the sounds that emerged from the inside had been awfully persuasive so she had simply carried her notes towards the chapel, which in the past month had come to be more homey and welcoming than her own dorm room. She was making her way to the altar when a raspy sound made her come to a halt. _

"_Mark!"_

_Addison winced and cleared her throat. _

"_Oh my God," the petite blonde screeched, pushing her boyfriend off of her. She pulled her top back up as he fell onto the floor, swearing._

"_What the hell…" Mark looked up at the intruder and his eyes were met with the most beautifully cold pair of azure eyes he had ever seen. Her hair was a fiery shade of auburn that was noticeable, even in the meager light. He subconsciously ran a hand through his own hair, his eyes running down her body to her legs which were way too long for her own good. He gulped. _

"_A church, really?" The redhead drawled. Addison looked down at the both of them. "Isn't this supposed to be the house of God?"_

"_Go high horse elsewhere, Montgomery, you're no better than the rest of us," Mark heard his girlfriend snap before she pulled him up and out of the church. He would later learn that her name was Addison Montgomery, and that she was a natural redhead. From time to time, he would look into Melanie's eyes find himself wishing they were deep cerulean instead of watery blue. He would tuck a loose curl behind her ear and wish the strands were blazing red instead of pale blonde. _

* * *

"With your tongue down her throat?" Addison raised her eyebrows.

"Stop painting the pretty picture," Leila said plainly, pursing her lips. It was disgusting. "You're religious?" She asked Addison, trying to steer away from the topic, to no avail.

"No, but I used to go to get away from other people. It's quiet on weekdays," Addison explained. "Your father, however, completely put me off church," she said, smirking.

"Your mother put me off blondes." His thumb traced patterns on the back of Addison's hand.

The redhead smiled as her daughter watched them, quietly urging her to continue. "Okay, so as fate would have it, he showed up in my cell biology and organic chemistry classes a week later and sat right next to me."

* * *

"_Mark Sloan," he told her, ignoring the stares of the rest of the class, flashing her one of his famous grins only to falter at her long and piercing gaze. It was the eyes, he told himself. _

_She remembered him. Not bothering to introduce herself, she turned back towards the front of the room where the lecture was and asked, "Where's Blondie?"_

* * *

"Fate," he snorted. "What a load of crap. It was me," he said proudly. "I got myself transferred to her classes." Both Addison and Leila gave him the same confused look.

"You _stalked_ me?"

"Now, when you put it like that…"

"Mark!"

"You liked it, Addie, shut up." Leila laughed in delight and he smiled. "I would trump her in class just to piss her off, the teacher's pet she was—"

"I was _not!_ And you didn't play fair," Addison protested, faintly remembering how he would catch her off guard by pinching her thigh or tickling her while she was in the middle of answering questions. "Anyway, we studied together a lot." She saw Leila suggestively quirk an eyebrow and groaned. "Actual studying, get your mind out of the gutter." How _is__ this girl my daughter? _"If I remember correctly, my notes raised your test score averages by five points," she grinned, turning so that the side of her face was pressed into his shirt. "We'd always been friends but then he broke up with his girlfriend and started camping out on my couch, eventually following me everywhere I go like a lost puppy." She laughed when Mark flicked her arm to express his disapproval.

* * *

"_I come bearing cheap pizza—"_

"_And expensive wine?" She knowingly finished, laughing as he kicked his old shirt aside and walked over to greet her with a short kiss. He'd taken to sleeping over; she was starting to wonder if he'd been kicked out of his apartment but she would never bring it up, and later give him a set of his own keys. She'd moved out of her dormitory and although she appreciated the peace and independence, it was nice having him around._

* * *

"What she meant to say was that we'd hang out a lot. Everyone else thought we were together, but it was purely platonic until… I should tell the story." He paused dramatically; smirking when his two girls gave him identically expectant looks. "It was a chilly November morning, the sky's overlapped clouds scattering as the morning sun broke out in bursts. In the front lawn of Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, the crisp copper leaves fell off the brightly colored trees that swayed gently in the autumn breeze and the dewy—"

"Mark," Addison interrupted, stopping herself from giggling. Mark could be such a drama queen.

He and Leila burst into laughter. He didn't think she would let him go on that long. Addison joined in, her head falling on his chest and he waited until it was quiet before he continued. "Now where was I?"

"The swaying trees in the autumn breeze," Leila teased.

"No, it was the dew," Addison quipped.

"Right," he chuckled. "I distracted her with falling leaves and sneaked in a kiss." He covered Addison's ears and told Leila, "Except _she_ secretly wanted me to kiss her. Had to keep up the goody-two-shoes image, you know."

"Lies!"

* * *

"_What was that for?" Addison asked breathily when they pulled apart. She noticed his cheeks were tinged red and she smiled before giving him a quick peck on his flushed cheek._

"_The leaves are the color of your hair," he said simply, before picking her up and kissing her again, silencing the tiny shriek she'd let out._

_It was cheesy and lacked any logic whatsoever but it felt right, so she kissed him back until her feet touched the ground._

* * *

"Then it became less friendly, and more... you know," he wiggled his eyebrows. "But there was no title to whatever it was that we had, and stayed that way for almost two years, until..." He trailed off, his lips thinning.

* * *

"_Addison!" He yelled, banging on the door. He heard her break into sobs from the other side of the wall and he beat on the wooden barrier between them again, calling her name. It was the fourth time that week that he'd followed into the building where they used to live. She'd change the goddamn locks and placed all his belongings save for his favorite shirt on the ground outside the room. He had no idea what it was that he apparently did wrong, but Addison wouldn't give in. Even her friends were ignoring him, he would soon discover, but they didn't know the real reason and neither would he until the reason turned eighteen years old._

* * *

Realization dawned on Leila's face and the room was an aching silence until Mark broke the ice saying good-naturedly, "That's when I started uh, _fornicating, _with everyone with a pulse and the right genitals."

"Mark!"

* * *

_He watched Addison from the corner of his eye as the brunette sitting on top of the table bent down to kiss him. When_ she_ finally looked up to catch his eye, hers became steely as he leaned into his whore of the week and made sure the kiss was loud enough to hold Addison's attention._

* * *

He continued unabashedly. "Then, in medical school, my best friend introduces her to me as the love of his life. She marries him several years later, I fall in love with her sometime along the way, she gets divorced, and now here we are."

"Now _that," _Leila said, beaming not unlike a Cheshire cat. "Is fate."

* * *

"Everything you have against us is circumstantial, and you know that, otherwise you wouldn't have come today," Savvy began quietly. She'd always preferred to play it like a paper cut. Those bastards were silent, fast, but hurt like a bitch. "The prosecution lacks substantial evidence to support their accusation that what my client did actually caused the accident." She saw the attorney try to cut in and raised her hand to stop him. She coolly looked around. She was nervous, but she'll be damned if she let herself show it. "Now, we can go to court, waste all your time and resources when you can be prosecuting _real _criminals_ and_ my client walks, after which we will automatically take legal action against your entire office, or the prosecution can kindly accept this offer," she pushed the small check towards the prosecutor. "And we can settle this privately and spare all of us some time. Does that sound good to you?" She smiled easily as she waited for a response.

* * *

**What did you think about Mark's drunken stunt? How did you like the flashbacks? And the chapter? Good, bad, horrible? Don't forget to feed the author (with long reviews)! How was your day? Tell me everything. **


	17. Adding A Bit Of Testosterone

**Hi guys! It's been uber long since the last chapter-I'm so sorry for leaving everyone hanging. Is anyone still reading this? I hope so. We're getting near the end... :( Please tell me what you think, any loose ends you want to have tied before I finally wrap this up and continue writing for Ordinary World. I also have some ideas for another story, but was wondering what pairing it should be... *wink* Anyhow, feedback is like always, welcome. During the hiatus, I loved the little e-mails I got saying someone has reviewed my story. Those had always made my days. Thank you for your patience. Here goes.**

* * *

Addison almost leapt out of her seat at the sound of her mobile phone ringing. She stuck her hand into her pocket, hands finally grasping onto the buzzing object. Pulling it out, she glanced at the caller ID and grimaced. _No, no…_ "It's The Captain," she hissed, her uncertain fingers hanging right above the screen.

He froze.

"Bizzy knows," she choked, quickly turning the volume off.

_What?_ "Bizzy? How? That's crazy. Jesus, Addison. _Breathe."_ Her head was leaned against his arm, her long, shapely fingers and fairly sizable hand seemed tiny underneath his larger ones, he sighed when his words caused her muscles to tighten and, her body becoming noticeably frigid against his. "Just calm down," he soothed.

"How am I supposed to calm down when my daughter could very well be in jail right now and Bizzy—?"

"You don't even know if _this,"_ he pointed to the phone frantically vibrating in her hand. "Has anything to do with your mother," he said lightly, carefully accusing her of being way too paranoid for her own good.

"What, so The Captain's calling just to say hi?" She scoffed, quite condescendingly if she said so herself.

_"I don't know,_ maybe he's having an afternoon party in his liquor cabinet and thought of you. Why don't you just inhale, exhale, and pick up the goddamn phone?"

The phone became still for a moment, lying limply in Addison's hand, until it started sounding again, the familiar tinkle of notes mixed with irritating buzz echoing throughout the room.

"Well that's unusually persistent of him," he remarked.

"I told you! _Bizzy knows." _

"_How?"_

"I don't know!"

"She's your mother!"

"That's exactly the point, Mark. What do I do?"

"Take a deep breath and answer it," he concluded.

"That's the best you can come up with?"

"Fine. Then don't breathe," Mark curtly interrupted, scowling at her raised tone. He was only trying to be helpful. If she was going to be difficult and snappish then he'll gladly leave her be. With Leila's current situation that proved over and over to be nothing less than stressful, he certainly didn't think arguing would do anything to lighten this predicament.

* * *

"May 2nd, 2007, 9:40 A.M. The Witness states that on April 15th, 2007, at between midnight and 1:00 A.M., during which the Witness was a passenger of a black Nissan Maxima, license plate number DL7031, there was a vehicular accident on the Boyston Avenue and East Pine Street intersection." He looked up at her, impatiently tapping his pen away.

"A truck came out of nowhere, cutting in front of us. James—uh, the driver—swerved. The car flipped over. I—I think he was already dead when I woke up."

"Do you need a moment?" Officer Demavivas was trying his best to be sympathetic, he really was. It was his job, after all. Especially after he was 'permanently, until further notice' assigned to desk duty-not that he hasn't gotten over the fact that his partner had basically thrown his ass under the bus in front of the Captain, because really, he was.

"No," Leila insisted, oblivious to the officer of the law's displeasure. The blonde lawyer—Savvy—gave her an encouraging smile. "I got out of the car. There was a crowd, I think, and the next thing I know is I'm on a hospital bed, probably spurting blood everywhere." She said dryly, trying to grin but ending up grimacing instead. She continued, more animatedly, "then I was fine, until one of your people handcu—"

"I think that's enough for now," Savvy interrupted, placing a hand on the younger girl's shoulders, startling her into silence. The girl was definitely Mark's kid, she thought, mentally rolling her eyes to the high heavens.

* * *

"I know something we can do to improve your mood," he said suddenly, after seven missed calls and a while, looking down at her, suggestive eyebrows wiggling. Addison only blinked, and he smirked. "It also happens to be a cure for anxiety."

Silence met them, for only about three seconds, until the plastic surgeon lifted his right hand, which had previously been hanging limply to his side, to place it purposefully on her thigh, his finger softly grazing up and down over the fabric of her skirt. "Mark!" She hissed, batting the offend body part aside. "You are unbelievable!" She half-shrieked half-whispered when he snorted, causing her to break into nervous giggles, pulling herself away from him. His hand moved to comfortably rest on her stomach instead, his arms holding her back against him.

"But we _are_ in desperate need ofstress _relieving_," he teased. "Or rather, _I_ am in desperate need."

She didn't even have to turn to see it. "I want to slap that sleazy expression on your face so much right now," Addison said dryly, staring straight ahead at the plaster walls in front of them, though her traitorous lips curved into a tiny smile that Mark did not see. She'd always appreciated his sense of humor, regardless of how out of place it could sometimes be.

Because she was faced away from him, he quipped, "You're not that flexible... and of course, I would know," earning another small groan from his female counterpart.

_Derek thinks I'm flexible, _she wanted to retort, but decided to keep quiet instead.

Bending his head, so that her head was tucked under his pointed nose, he drew in the scent of her shampoo and exhaled with a contented sigh. "Feeling better?" He asked, mumbling into her ear.

"Well, isn't this sweet."

Addison turned towards the all too familiar voice and gaped. "Archer?" With mixed emotions, she quickly got to her feet, successfully tearing herself away from her stricken companion.

Mark immediately straightened his posture. This wasn't good. He stood up. "Hey, Archer," he said loudly, trying to obscure his uncertainty.

"Addie," Archer Montgomery greeted cheerfully, pulling his sister into a giant hug. "Mark Sloan." Stepping back, his eyes swept over the scene in front of him; his old friend, strangely no longer looking so smooth and arrogant, and his baby sister, who looked like she'd just seen a ghost. He was curious to know the reason for their less than excitement to see him, but the sight was more than slightly amusing so he decided to break the ice with a ridiculous rumor he'd overheard while walking past the nurse's station. "What's this I hear about the two of you and an adulterous love-child?"

* * *

"Blondie, I'm in Vegas. Something wrong?"

Savvy looked down at the young girl standing next to her before speaking, her phone pressed to her ear. "Bill, I have terrible news."

* * *

"How did you—?" Mark stammered, confused. _How the hell did _Archer, _of all people, know?_

Before her brother could respond, Addison spoke up. "Archer, Leila's eighteen."

_Leila? _Archer did some mental calculations while staring at the other two's faces—Addison's blank, but with unsettling eyes, and Mark's simply horror-stricken_. _The neurologist's face fell. "You've got to be kidding me," he muttered. _Eighteen years ago. Yale. Addison went to Yale… and so did Mark_. Then, his eyes fixated on the plastic surgeon, and his demeanor noticeably darkened. "You got my sister pregnant at nineteen," he said quietly, his expression unreadable.

Mark paled.

"Twenty." Addison took a small step sideways, placing herself between the two men. Now was definitely not ideal timing for her brother and Mark to beat each other to pieces on the hospital floor. "He didn't know."

"He didn't know. Right, like that makes it any better. What were you thinking? _Twenty,_ Addison! It was a fucking teen pregnancy and, and I had no idea. Bizzy and the Captain had no idea! Addison, you were in _college_ for Gods' sake."

"I did what I could and lived with it for almost twenty years. You found out a second ago. Don't tell me what I already know," she warned, her voice turning cold.

"How can you be so stupid? So _reckless..._ How can you keep something like this—?"

He could hear the pain in Archer's voice. "Quit yelling at her," Mark stepped to the side. "Just hit me and get it over with."

Addison stared in horror as her brother complied, his right fist connecting with Mark's jaw, knocking him to the ground, before repeatedly striking him over and over again. She began screaming for Archer to stop when she realized that Mark wasn't going to defend himself.

* * *

_"Goddamn_ it, Savannah, I thought you said you had it in the bag. You told me they said she just had to file a report, get cross-examined—"

"They cleared her of all charges," Savvy interrupted, grinning. Money changes everything.

He lowered his voice._ "_Stop fucking around."

"I'm serious, it's over. The only terrible news is that you're never going to see my gorgeous face again."

"You could've texted," was the answer she got.

"And miss the chance to hear that scratchy, darling voice?" The blonde laughed, hung up, and turned to look at her niece, whose face was an awkward mixture of bafflement and ecstasy. "Let's go. I bet your parents are waiting."

* * *

"Just who do you think you are, going around punching _my_ surgeons in _my _hallway?" The Chief demanded. "And _you two! _You are adults! The two of you have been treating _my _hospital like your own private playground—your job is to help patients. How can you help anyone if you can't even help yourselves? I'll say this _only once: _Do not bring your personal problems to _my _hospital."

"Richard, I can explain," Addison offered from her seat, but her mentor's steely gaze silenced her. All of them were currently in the Chief's office where interested passers-by on the other side of the glass watched on as her overprotective, asshole of a brother and a battered and bloody Mark Sloan stood behind her side-by-side, the three of them situated opposite the enraged Chief of Surgery.

"Addison, your idiot brother's _very _lucky I was able to stop security from dragging his sorry behind to the nearest police station."

Addison winced. She did _not _want Leila's first time meeting her uncle to be where said uncle was behind bars, waiting for bail to be posted, for assaulting her _father. _

"Thank you, and I'm very sorry Dr. Webber, for the uh, trouble," Archer said, breaking the silence. "It won't happen again."

"All of you, get out of here," Webber snapped. "And Sloan, do something to your face. I don't want you walking around looking half-dead, scaring the patients to cardiac arrest."

* * *

It was like the beginning of a lame joke: Two Montgomeries and a Sloan walked into an examination room…

"Here," Archer said, handing Addison the packet of antiseptic wipes he'd found in the drawers earlier, before turning his back to rummage for a suture kit. He heard Mark sharply inhale from the seat behind him, and his sister inaudibly whispering and felt a pang of guilt. All of them had been somewhat close friends back in medical school, although he was older and had usually hung out with his own group of peers. Addie and Mark had always been too close, but like everyone else, he'd always thought they knew each other through Derek, and had never even _dreamed _that they were _this _close. Archer Montgomery internally shuddered. Now there was a _child _involved. He set the small surgical kit onto the table before hovering awkwardly above the other two.

"Thank you for missing my nose," Mark said, casually, looking at himself in the small mirror. Archer's little outburst had left him with a bruised and bloody lip, a battered left cheek, purple left eye and a bleeding eyebrow. Nothing permanent, like a broken nose or a disfigured bone.

Addison made a small noise at that, preoccupied with stitching back the wounds of the father of her child's face and Archer raised his eyebrows, but otherwise kept quiet and moved to sit on top of the sorry excuse of a bed across from them, carefully observing.

"Straight and thin, Addie, straight and thin," Mark murmured, eyes trained at the mirror. He held as breath as Addison finished. "Nice," he complimented, though he didn't expect anything less from her. He might be famous in plastics and aesthetics for his minimum scarring techniques, but the woman stitched up tiny babies for a living.

She briefly smiled, before focusing her attention on the piece of work in front of her. "Archer, where are the wax bandages?" Addison called. Archer got up.

"Occlusive dressing," Mark translated. "White box. Yes, that one."

"Get the small ones, please. Thank you."

"So Archer, my man, what brings you to Seattle?" Mark good-naturedly asked, as Addison concentrated on his face.

"Family," Archer vaguely mumbled. "I only heard you got hitched with my sister after I got here, though I didn't think the rumors of you guys having _procreated _were true."

_Ugh. _"We didn't get _hitched. _Does that happen to be why the Captain was incessantly calling?" Addison asked. _Please say no. _

"I called Bizzy right after I heard," was the reply.

"Mama's boy," Mark muttered darkly. Truth to be told, he was afraid of Addison's mother. The woman gave him the chills.

"Archie!"

"Easy, baby, it's my face you're manhandling," Mark warned. "Screw it up and you'll have to wake up to scars every morning for the rest of your life."

She paused, smiling. "You want me to wake up next to you every morning for the rest of my life?"

Before the plastic surgeon could respond, Archer cut in with a groan, rolling his eyes. "Sloan, tell me that wasn't a marriage proposal."

* * *

Standing up to leave, Addison checked her phone. "Savvy texted me thirty minutes ago. She and Leila are on their way," she said. _Yes!_

"Seriously?" Mark asked, grinning in triumph. _One celebratory sex, coming right up. Or maybe two. Or three. _

"Savvy's here?" Archer asked. _Leila? Oh God._

"It's a long story," Mark explained. He looked at the wall clock. "Hey, they should be here by now, why don't we meet them at the entrance and grab lunch outside together later?"

"Sounds great. I'll call Sav. I've got a quick pre-op in five. See you all downstairs in thirty," Addison said and Mark nodded, guiding Archer the other way, but her brother refused to cooperate.

"Wait—with Leila?" Archer stuttered, frozen on spot. To say the bachelor was unsure about meeting his niece would be an understatement.

"Yes, and you're coming," Addison said, her voice threatening though she was smirking. "How else are we going to explain to Leila how her father's face was beaten to a pulp only minutes after your arrival?"

* * *

"Meredith Grey," she muttered, surprised, as the other woman—no pun intended—absently nodded. Catching the blonde's eyes, she decided against making shallow small talk and settled to stand quietly in the corner, against the metal compartment's walls instead, looking forward to the lunch that was bound to be very uncomfortable for Archer, and hilarious for everyone else present.

"Addison!"

The woman in question turned, cocking her head, an eyebrow automatically arching, to say either "Why are you voluntarily speaking to me?" or "What can you possibly want?" but she was in a rather good mood, so it was not the slightest bit unfriendly.

After their many confrontations and shameful moments in the past that had ultimately led to one McDivorce, McNoLongerShepherd had finally stopped special-requesting her as her intern, after which she and the attending rarely saw each other, and talked even less. It was as if they'd had a silent mutual agreement to avoid each other whenever possible, which made it extremely easy to remain civil. However, it'd left the two being sort of very awkward colleagues. "I heard about your daughter," Meredith finally said casually, wanting to be the bigger person. "I'm glad everything's o-kay..." She almost spluttered out the last bit, but stopped herself just in time. _Shaky, but it's a start,_ she decided. If she could give herself a pat on the back, she definitely would. Her imaginary hand stopped mid-air, when it was only halfway to her imaginary back, when she realized that the other doctor still hasn't replied. "I mean, everything_ is_ okay, right?" She asked cautiously, her hand slightly twitching nervously, betraying her airy front. _What if everything's _not _okay?_ She internally hyperventilated. _She's going to think I'm mocking her, tell Sloan, and then collaborate with him to make sure I never see the inside of an OR again... I've still got Derek, though... Derek will take my side. Derek will give me brain surgeries. Brain tumors. Nerve transplants. Yes. Oh my God, what if she thinks I'm being condescending?_

"Meredith."

Her head snapped back up at the sound of her own name, frazzled eyes staring straight ahead not unlike a deer caught in headlights.

"Meredith," Addison said again for the fourth time, straight-faced, though her eyebrows were raised, questioningly.

"Huh?" _Shit, shit, shit._

"I said thank you," the redhead said kindly but firmly, small glints of light dancing in her eyes.

"Your daughter is—she's okay?" Meredith asked in surprise.

Addison smiled. _Meredith can tell Derek._ "My daughter's okay."

* * *

"Archer!" Savvy shrieked, pulling the man into a bear hug, drowning out Leila's exclamations. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"Sav," Archer said meekly, taking in the sight of his niece.

Mark almost sniggered. "Leila, meet _Uncle Archer_. Archer, Leila."

With sweaty palms and squeaky voice, Archer Montgomery shook the hands of his flesh and blood, the 18-year old brunette version of Addison.

"He's Addie's older brother," Savvy explained, nudging the teenage girl.

_Oh. _Leila nodded. She smiled and noted that he looked nothing like her mother. _"What_ did your face fall into this time?" She asked Mark again, pointing, her grey eyes narrowing.

"Uh, my fist," Archer admitted. The other man smirked as Leila and Savannah's eyes widened.

"You hit him?" Leila stared incredulous, her eyes darting between the two men. "Why?" She demanded.

"Archer, have you lost your mind?" Savvy asked, pursing her lips.

"He knocked up my sister!" The man protested loudly, attracting the attention of hospital workers and visitors alike.

Leila raised her eyebrows, bewildered. Mark coughed. Then, he heard the ever-familiar sound and tempo of clicking heels from behind him, growing louder and louder, stopping only when the owner of the noise was beside him.

"Now that we're sure the entire hospital knows, what do you say we go ahead and have lunch, brother?"

* * *

"I'm actually not a violent person," Archer clarified. The five of them were seated at the back corner of the burger shop, waiting for their order to arrive.

Savvy snorted.

"Right," Mark and Leila said together, smirking.

"He's not," Addison said.

"I was just… taken by surprise. I'm sorry," Archer drawled. He grabbed the miniscule vase of one poppy flower off the table and handed it to the other man as a mock peace offering.

Mark took it, shaking his head. He set it down, grinning. "But if my scars don't heal properly, I'll be suing your ass for your entire trust fund and make sure I don't ever have to work again," They laughed. He looked at Addison. "Even if he _is _your brother," he winked.

* * *

At the airport that evening, the five, plus Derek, stood at the gates, a sense of nostalgia washing over the adults.

"I thought you were going back home with me," Savvy said, nudging Archer.

"So soon?" Archer replied. "You go ahead, Sav. I have a little something to discuss with Derek here."

"With _Derek?" _Mark, Addison, and Savvy echoed while Leila wrinkled her nose in confusion.

"But you hate—" Mark reminded.

"Savvy, tell Weiss we said hi," Derek quickly interrupted, a chorus of agreements following his words.

"Thanks for everything," Leila told Savvy, as everyone took turns hugging the blonde attorney one by one.

"You take care, Sweetie. I'll see you in New York someday."

"Yeah… Someday."

* * *

**A bit short, and not much *action* but hopefully I was able to give some insight and even dimension into the characters. What did you think? Did you miss this story? Were you disappointed? I have the ending planned out already... tell me everything! Lots of love, **


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